Faith in Noah’s flood as the dominant agent of erosion rapidly lost ground through the teaching of Lyell after 1830, but the theory of systematic development of landscapes by rivers gained little. In fact, Scrope in 1830,[11] in showing that the entrenched meanders of the Moselle prove gradual progressive stream work, was in advance of his English contemporary. Judged by contributions to the Journal, Lyell’s teaching served to standardize American opinion of earth sculpture somewhat as follows: The ocean is the great valley maker, but rivers also make them; the position of valleys is determined by original or renewed surface inequalities or by faulting; exceptional occurrences—earthquakes, bursting of lakes, upheavals and depressions—have played an important part. Hayes (1839)[12] thought that the surface of New York was essentially an upraised sea-bottom modified by erosion of waves and ocean currents. Sedgwick (1838)[13] considered high-lying lake basins proof of valleys which were shaped under the sea. Many of the valleys in the Chilian Cordillera were thought by Darwin (1844) to have been the work of waves and tides, and water gaps are ascribed to currents “bursting through the range at those points where the strata have been least inclined and the height consequently is less.” Speaking of the magnificent stream-cut canyons of the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, gorges which lead to narrow exits through monoclines, Darwin says: “To attribute these hollows to alluvial action would be preposterous.”[14]