No. 200.3 
235 
The idea is not new that this section of country has been submerged 
under an ocean, an idea perfectly correct, and substantiated by facts, 
which all must admit; yet the notions which prevail in relation to its 
drainage are absurd in part, viz. that it was effected by the wearing down 
of barriers by river currents. Now a barrier may be worn down to the 
level of tide water, and fresh or salt water lakes situated above tide, 
may be drained in this manner to that level; but an arm of the sea could 
not be drained, and the only way a change could be produced in the re- 
lative levels of land and sea, would be by the elevation of the former 
above the latter. It is in this way the ancient sea has been displaced 
from the Champlain basin. That this basin could not have been an in- 
sulated salt lake, is evident from the fact, that the present level of the 
Champlain is only 93 feet above tide water, and as its level must have 
extended 200 feet above the present level of the lake, it would of course 
communicate with the sea by the St. Lawrence channel on the north, 
and the Hudson on the south, converting it at once into an arm of the 
sea.* 
If these views are correct, we can see no serious objection to the po- 
sition, that the tertiary of Champlain, and the clays of the Hudson river 
oelong to one formation, notwithstanding the absence of marine shells 
in the latter, especially when it is considered that they are not at all con- 
stant in the former, and are also wholly wanting in extensive districts 
which no doubt belong to this tertiary, inasmuch, that they are continu- 
ous with it, and in truth parts of it, an assertion which any one may 
prove for himself by an examination of the long narrow valleys of Lake 
Champlain and the Hudson river, 
I have already stated that the sea has left marks of its wearing action 
on the rocks in the neighborhood of the lake, far above its present level. 
An interesting locality of this kind, may be seen on the road north of 
West Port, towards Essex. The road passes through two parallel 
ridges of granite, between which there is just space enough for it to 
pass. It appears that between these bluiTs the tide ebbed and flowed 
with some violence, as they are worn smooth on both sides. On the 
west, the softer portions of the rock are worn out like a long cylindrical 
excavation. Fig. 17, 
* These are the reasons wliich lead me to maintain that the drainage has been effected by an 
ufilift (tf the land, and not by the wearing down of barriers by flowing water. During the 
time, therefore, when the tertiary deposits were forming, the long valleys of the Champlain 
and of the Hudson, were each so low that there was a direct communication between them by 
an arm of the sea. 
