ANCIENT WATER LEVELS OP CHAMPLAIN— HUDSON VALLEYS 165 



Chapter 6 



VALLEYS OF LAKE GEORGE AND WOOD CREEK 



The Champlain and Hudson valleys are connected by three 

 narrow detiles beginning on the west with that of Lake George; 

 next east comes that of the southern end of Lake Champlain via 

 South Bay; then that of the Wood creek depression. These de- 

 pressions, evidently preglacial, have been more or less modified by 

 glacial erosion and deposition. For a time after the ice disap- 

 peared from these defiles, water appears to have stood over all but 

 the highest of the cols (Harrisina hollow), on the eastern base of 

 French mountain at the southern end of Lake George. 



Lake George. The narrow valley occupied by Lake George is 

 heavily choked with glacial drift at the southern end. The de- 

 posits from the ruins of old Fort William Henry southward along 

 the old military road past Bloody pond bespeak deposition in 

 front of a mass of ice filling the lake valley. Subsequent waters 

 appear not to have risen as high as Bloody pond, a kettle hole in 

 the drift, at an elevation of nearly 570 feet above sea level. The 

 more open pass at the east base of French mountain appears to 

 have been the line of the main preglacial valley. This pass is called 

 Harrisina hollow on Fitch's map of 1850. There are here two 

 apparently water-swept passages one at 393, the other at 349 feet 

 in elevation. 



Professor Kemp has called attention to the islands in Lake 

 George as indications of an old divide, from which he infers that 

 a stream once flowed north in the northern part of the lake and 

 one south in the southern part, glacial deposition at both ends 

 having brought about the existing ponding of the waters. 



In the diagram, plate 28, it will be seen that the upper stages of 

 glacial waters in this area following the retreat of the ice entered 

 the northern part of the lake but the Harrisina channels could 

 not have controlled the hight of any but those preglacial lakes 

 which may have existed in the Lake George valley prior to the 

 melting out of the ice from its northern end, for the reason that 

 lower passes exist to the east in the Whitehall district. 



No detailed examination of the valley was made in the present 

 survey either for the history of the ice retreat or for shore lines. 



