112 



N E W YORK STATE MUSEUM 



ground. There is here indubitable evidence of the deposition of 

 the terrace in the presence of a tongue of ice lying in the Hudson 

 gorge as Gilbert some years ago suggested. 1 



On the opposite side of the river below Cold Spring, a terrace 

 of glacial gravels forms a counterpart to the terrace at the 

 parade ground. It also, rests on and covers over the ancient 

 rock bench at this point. Traces of the gravel of this stage 

 exist in Cold Spring on the north bank of Foundry brook near 

 the mills. 



^Gravelly water-laid drift also mantles the rock terrace both 

 north and south of Highland Falls, and flattish deposits of the 

 same character are not wanting on the rock terrace above Gar- 

 risons on the east bank of the river. 



The West Point terrace is but the last and lowest of a series 

 of deposits marking the dwindling away of the ice tongue which 

 filled and pressed through the Highland canyon. Ascending the 

 road passing from the soldiers quarters at West Point westward 

 along the base of Crow's Xest mountain, one arrives within a dis- 

 tance of J mile at a small frontal moraine at an elevation of 400 

 feet. This deposit, mostly flat topped, is mounded on the 

 east and though no section is shown it is probably composed in 

 part of outwashed gravel and shoved or dumped materials com- 

 ing from the ice sheet when the ice still rose to this hight in the 

 valley. 



Going westward to a junction with the Highland Falls road, 

 then ^ mile southeast from the junction, this road traverses a 

 distinct moraine forming a spur on the northern side of the 

 valley. The deposit is convex downstream and is probably due 

 to a lobelet of the ice pushed through this valley to this point 

 prior to the halt at the 400 foot contour above West Point. 

 These details are mentioned as showing the evidence of succes- 

 sive stages in the melting of the ice in the valley. 



S'o tar as the terraces at the West Point stage are concerned, 

 their close approximation in level with the hight of the old rock 

 terrace, the filling of spaces in the river bend upstream from the 

 projection of the old rock terrace, and the thin veneer of the 

 wash of this stage over the old rock terraces on both sides of 

 the river suggest that the rock terrace controlled the hight of 



x Cited by Dr F. J. H. Merrill, in Am. Jour. Sci. 1896. 41 :461. 



