2 THE BOROUGH OF THE BRONX 



Not content with this, scientists go still further back to what 

 they term the Glacial Era, when a mass of ice covered this land 

 and the only inhabitant of which was the "glacial man," a wild 

 savage whose features and characteristics resembled those of the 

 Esquimau. 



Geologists who have made a careful study of the Glacial Period, 

 or Ice Age, say that in ages past nearly all of North America north 

 of the fortieth parallel was covered with moving ice sheets, or 

 glaciers. We find evidences of this everywhere even in our own 

 Borough, where rock surfaces have been ground and polished, and 

 great boulders, which have been carried along hundreds of miles 

 by the slowly moving glaciers, have found lodgment here and there. 

 The "Rocking Stone," just west of the Buffalo range in Bronx 

 Park, which is an example, has been for years one of the curiosities 

 of that region. Tradition has it that sachems and medicine-men 

 of the various Indian tribes built their council-fires about this 

 colossal cube of pinkish granite and held there many a weird 

 seance. 



A wager was once made between a neighboring farmer and 

 the foreman of the Lydig estate, upon which the stone stood, that 

 the combined efforts of twenty-four oxen could not dislodge it 

 from its bed, notwithstanding the fact that a single person push- 

 ing from the right direction, can easily sway it back and forth. 

 The presence of the rock on the same site attests the futility of 

 the effort. 



Another gigantic boulder was "Pudding Rock," at Boston 

 Road and Cauldwell Avenue, just below East One Hundred Sixty- 

 sixth Street. This ancient landmark gained its name from its 

 resemblance to a pudding in the bag. On one side of the boulder 

 nature had chisled out a fireplace which the Indians used when 

 they held their corn feasts. It was also under the cool shade of this 

 mammoth rock that the tired Huguenots paused to rest when they 

 made their weekly pilgrimage from New Rochelle to worship at the 

 shrine of Old Trinity Church. This once cherished landmark is no 

 more. In order to make room for a modern residence, it has been 

 shattered into a thousand fragments by the advancing march of 

 civilization. 



Other noted boulders that have been generally accepted as 

 relics of the Pleistocene period are "Black Rock," on Westchester 

 Avenue, just above the old Watson estate and the Westchester 



