MARYLAND GEOLOGICAL SURVEY 65 



The Eastern Shore district of Cecil county is triangular in shape 

 with the apex directed toward the north. The base of this triangle 

 at the northern bank of the Sassafras river has a width of 15 miles. 

 This width rapidly diminishes northward, and at Elkton it has de- 

 creased to about two miles. Throughout this region the country is 

 everywhere low and flat. It rises little, if any, above 80 feet, and 

 were it not for the presence of river valleys which descend somewhat 

 abruptly beneath the general level the surface of the region might 

 be described as almost featureless. 



Notwithstanding the great monotony of this Eastern Shore district, 

 a little examination reveals the fact that it is not composed of one 

 plain, but of two. The more extensive level, and the one more 

 readily observed, occupies the divides and the entire surface down to 

 a height of 35 to 40 feet above sea-level. It is extensively developed 

 throughout the district and attains the full width of the district at 

 its southern margin. 



The second plain is developed as a narrow fringe below and about 

 the margin of the first one. It seldom attains a width of over a half 

 a mile and frequently is not as wide. When best developed it ex- 

 tends from tide-water gradually upward to an altitude of 30 to 40 

 feet, where it is separated from the upper plain by a low scarp. In 

 certain localities, however, this lower plain has suffered severely from 

 the erosive work of the waves and streams, and either terminates iu 

 a low sea-clifT or else has been entirely swept away. 



The only exception to the general level of the Eastern Shore dis- 

 trict is Grays Hill, which rises to a height of 268 feet above tide, or 

 about 175 feet above the surrounding plain. The mass of this hill, 

 however, is composed of crystalline rocks, veneered about its flanks 

 with Coastal Plain sediments, and therefor should be regarded as an 

 outlier of the Piedmont Plateau rather than a portion of the Coastal 

 Plain. It actually was an island rising above the level of the ocean 

 when the sediments which cover the surface of the Eastern Shore 

 district were deposited. 



The "Western Shore district, or that portion of Cecil county lying 

 between Elk River and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, lies almost 



