Mesozoic and Cenozoic Geology and Paleontology. 148 
throughout British Columbia. These terraces show only the ordinary 
subeerial denudation since they constituted the shore lines of lakes and 
rivers; but they are standing monuments of evidence to disprove the ex- 
istence of a glacial period on this continent, or the existence of a conti- 
nental ice sheet; for no one can conceive of the movement of such a heavy 
body ofice across a valley, without disturbing the graveled terraces that 
border it, upon both sides, at different elevations. The natural towers 
that stand as an evidence of erosion from the Wasatch times to the 
present; from the Green River Eocene to the present; from the Bridger 
Eocene to the present; from the White River Miocene to the present; the 
columnar masses, irregular pyramids, sandstone towers, and turreted 
outliers of the Bad Lands of Colorado, Wyoming, Montana and British 
Columbia; the monuments on Monument creek; the Garden of the 
Gods; the buttes in all the mountain chains; the transverse ridges, 
lone mountains and exalted peaks; and the whole array of canons 
from Texas and Mexicoto Alaska, all alike, tell us, in language un- 
mistakable, that no glacial sheet ever moved south upon the western 
plains or mountain ranges. No geologist has ever found a rock or 
bowlder that had crossed the dividing ridge from one valley to another 
in all this western region of the United States and British America. 
No one has ever found any evidence of any general drift action, or 
general ice action in any part of the territory. Then, why talk about 
a continental ice sheet or glacial period ? 
Many of the phenomena attributed by glacialists to a continental 
sheet of ice belong to the ordinary eroding atmospheric causes, others 
to drifting sand, others to land slides, others to land slips or ava- 
lanches, which have been precipitated into the bed of the river, pro- 
ducing a dam that backed the water up until a lake was formed, and 
the quantity of water became so great as to force its way through the 
barrier, and cast the increased volume with terrific force upon the 
valley below. Lyell notices the devastating effects of one of these land 
slips from the White mountains of New Hampshire, into the Saco 
river, in 1826, and points out its insignificance, when compared with 
those occasioned by earthquakes, when the boundary hills, for miles 
in length, are thrown down into the hollow ofa valley. The effects of 
even extraordinary floods, in river valleys, seem to be overlooked by 
some glacialists; and, in this connection, it will not be without interest 
to call attention to one that happened in the Connecticut. 
In the winter of 1780,* well known for being one of the severest ever 
* Hayden’s Geological Essays. 
