MODIFIED DRIFT ALONG CONNECTICUT RIVER. 43 
The Kame of Connecticut Valley. 
From Lyme to Windsor we find a continuous gravel ridge or kame, 
extending twenty-four miles along the middle and lowest portion of this 
valley, with its top from 100 to 250 feet above the river, or from 500 to 
600 feet above the sea. Its material is gravel and sand, in irregular, 
obliquely-bedded layers, always showing an inclined, and in most cases 
a distinctly anticlinal or arched, stratification. The sand is usually coarse 
and sharp, well suited for masons’ use. It occurs in layers of varying 
thickness up to one or two feet, but sometimes it is wholly wanting. The 
gravel, which always forms the principal part of the ridge, varies in coarse- 
ness, from layers with pebbles only one or two inches in diameter, to por- 
tions where the largest measure one and a half or two feet. The finer 
kinds prevail; and the channels of brooks cutting through the ridge fre- 
quently show no pebbles exceeding one foot in size. All the materials of 
this kame, and of its remnants along this valley, are plainly water-worn 
and stratified. 
Large and unworn boulders, which could not have been brought in the 
same way with the gravel and sand, occur very rarely upon or in the Con- 
necticut kame. Except at its south termination, the only instance of this 
discovered was three fourths of a mile south of Pompanoosuc river, at 
the point where the kame reaches its greatest height above the sea. Two 
angular boulders, each of five feet dimension, were found here at the top 
of the ridge, one lying on the surface, and the other partly imbedded. 
This place was covered with a thick growth of sapling white pines. Sev- 
eral miles at least of journey on foot along the top of this ridge, and the 
examination of many sections where the river or its tributaries have cut 
through it, failed to reveal other boulders of this kind. 
One or both sides of this kame are generally covered by the alluvium 
of the upper terrace, which plainly was of later deposition; but the top 
usually projects in a long, rounded ridge, 10 to 30 feet above the adjoin- 
ing highest plain. At one place, east of Hartland depot, this plain has 
been swept away from both sides, and the kame forms a conspicuous, 
steep ridge 125 feet in height. Wherever it is exposed, it is readily rec- 
ognized by the pebbles which strew its surface, and which are very rarely 
found in the ordinary modified drift of the valley. 
