348 



THE ICE AGE IN NORTH AMERICA. 



The levelly stratified plains of sand and gravel which 

 spread out around the southern end of the kame systems, and 

 which to a greater or less extent border their margin through- 

 out their entire length, should not be passed without notice, 



Fig. 107.— Buried kame near Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. (Lewis and Wright.) 



since they in a remarkable degree confirm our general theory 

 concerning the origin of kames. As has been said, the 

 kames mark the great lines of drainage which poured over 

 the southern margin of the glaciated area during its later 

 stages when the ice itself furnished numerous and important 

 barriers to direct the torrents, and when the earthy material 

 in and on the ice was readily at hand to be' swept along by 

 these temporary streams. The pebbles, sand, and gravel 

 lodged by the way in the ice-channels, and on the surface, 

 furnished the material from which the kames were to be 

 formed. Wherever these streams came out of their confine- 

 ment and flowed over a level country, they deposited vast 

 deltas of sand and gravel, analogous to those that are now 

 being deposited at the mouths of all large rivers. One of the 

 most remarkable of these kame-deltas is that in Cherryfield 

 and Deblois, near the eastern coast of Maine. This sandy 

 plain, many miles in extent, is not an ocean deposit, but can 

 be readily connected with the streams which deposited to the 

 north of it one of the largest belt of kames in the State, and 

 whose course can be traced for nearly one hundred miles 

 toward Mount Katahdhi. Down the line of the kame there 

 poured, between icy walls, during the closing stages of the 

 Glacial period,, a vast but fitful silt-laden stream of water, 

 which, as it emerged from its more constrained limits within 

 the ice-sheet, was slackened in its movement and rapidly de- 



