Moraines in the White Mountains. — Uphani. 13 
river, and a part which remained, known as "The Giant's 
Grave," was leveled and removed from the site of the Fabyan 
House. This ridge, best seen from one- fourth to three-fourths 
of a mile east and southeast of Fabyan's, and again, after an 
interval of erosion, to three- fourths of a mile farther south, con- 
« 
sists of sand and gravel, with all its cobbles rounded by water- 
wearing, of all sizes to a foot, and rarely one and a half feet, 
in diameter. Its hight above the river and its bottomland varies 
from 25 to 50 feet. 
This series of eskers, traced thus about six miles, near the 
west base of the Mt. Washington range and north and west 
of the principal and central area of the White mountains, was 
certainly formed by a glacial river, inclosed on each side by 
walls of the departing ice-sheet, and flowing away from that 
area, that is, from southeast to northwest and west, in the 
same direction as the present Ammonoosuc river. It demon- 
strates, like the Bethlehem moraine, though for a somewhat 
later stage of the glacial melting, that a remnant of the general 
ice-sheet was rapidly and continuously melting back on this 
tract from northwest to southeast, lingering latest on the flanks 
of the Mt. Washington and Mt. Willey ranges. 
After the melting of the general sheet of ice which had been 
accumulated during the Glacial period, no local valley glaciers 
survived in this region, as we know from the absence of valley 
moraines. But for some geologically short time, while the 
mountain region was still ice-covered, excepting its highest 
ridges and peaks, the currents of the ice on the north and west 
sides of this area were reversed from their former course dur- 
ing the Ice age ; and in the large valleys on the west, north, and 
east, the glaciation • during that short time generally passed 
down the valleys under the guidance of the grand topographic 
features, which through the preceding long period of glaciation 
had been generally overridden by the southeasterly moving ice- 
sheet. 
Professor Hitchcock observes* that many large boulders of 
the coarse-grained gray granite of Mt. Deception, close north 
of the Fabyan House, were transported to the fields east of the 
Twin Mountain House, that is, westward down the Ammon- 
oosuc valley, a distance of four miles. If the rate of this de- 
• Geology ofS. H., toI. iii. p. 2*2, 1878. 
