ANCIENT GLACIERS. 93 



Lake, whose highest point, at Wilseyville, is nine hundred 

 and forty feet above tide. Another leads south to the 

 Chemung River from Seneca Lake, whose highest point, 

 at Horseheads, is less than nine hundred feet above tide. 

 The cols farther west are somewhat more elevated ; the 

 one at Portage, leading from the Genesee Eiver into the 

 Oanisteo, being upwards of thirteen hundred feet, and 

 that of Dayton, leading from Cattaraugus Creek into the 

 Conewango, being about the same. Of other southern 

 outlets farther west we will speak later on. 



Fixing our minds now upon the region under consid- 

 eration, in the southern part of the State of New York, 

 we can readily see that a glacial lake must have existed in 

 front of the ice while it was advancing, until it had reached 

 the river-partings between the Mohawk and the St. Law- 

 rence Rivers on the north and the Susquehanna and Alle- 

 ghany Rivers on the south. After the ice had attained its 

 maximum extension, and was in process of retreat, there 

 would be a repetition of the phenomena, only they would 

 occur in the reverse order. The glacial markings which 

 we see are, of course, mainly those produced during the 

 general retreat of the ice. 



The Susquehanna River stretching out its arms — the 

 Chenango and Chemung Rivers — to the east and the west, 

 evidently serves as a line of drainage for the vast glacial 

 floods. These floods have left, along their courses, extensive 

 elevated gravel terraces, with much material in them which 

 is not local, but which has been washed out of the direct 

 glacial deposits from the far north. The east-and-west 

 line of the water-parting throughout the State is charac- 

 terised by excessive accumulations of glaciated material, 

 forming something like a terminal moraine, and is desig- 

 nated by President Chamberlin as " the terminal moraine 

 of the second Glacial epoch," corresponding, as he thinks, 

 to the interior line already described as characterising the 

 south shore of Jfew England, 



