Not only does the gap of the mountain, where the river passes through it, exhibit strong reasons of a passage being worn through it by the action of the water of a lake in this valley, but the knolls and low hills in this valley show that they have undergone much washing of water; and, what appears somewhat mysterious, hills thirty and forty feet higher than the surface of the river flats are all composed of ground, gravel, sand and such smooth stones as are in the bottoms of rivers, from which it appears that not only the surface of those hills, but that all the materials of which they are composed, have for some length of time been water-washed. We find in them some places of clear sand, not mixed with the other materials mentioned, such as is in river sand banks; from which we have reason to conjecture that after the water received a passage through the mountain it created a current in the lake towards it, and as that passage enlarged and wore down, the water in the lake drew off and the current of its stream increased and washed the highest parts of its bottom down into the hollows, where the water was deep, and thereby run down gradually large bodies of water-washed stones, gravel, sand and ground from the highest elevations of the bottom surface into its lowest parts, many of which have remained where they have been carried by the waters, and the adjoining ground, which first was highest, has run down the stream and continued to be moved down until a gradual descent of the rivers was formed, on a bottom of smooth water-washed stones, gravel and sand, which now lie at different depths below the surface of the river flats, viz.: from about four to seven and eight feet below that of the lands along the Neversink river, and at greater depths along the surface of the Delaware river flats. After a river bottom was formed where the flats now are, the stream creating meandering channels through those river bottom flats would contain the water of the rivers when low, but in freshets, overflow the flat bottoms, whereby in every freshet a part of the ground which the water carried down in such times, lodged on the surface of those flats, which, continuing to accumulate in this way for a great length of time, raised the surface so high that the freshets did not overflow it, unless partially in uncommon high water; and as the waters became more and more confined in stationary channels, the bottoms of these wore down by the action and weight of the water. In this manner undoubtedly was formed the soil of our river lands. In the vicinity of the gap of the Shawangunk mountain, through which the New York & Erie Railroad passes, are indications in some places on the east side of the mountain of the surface of the ground having in a very remote period of time been under water, when I contemplate it ran through this gap into the valley west of the mountain into a lake which has been mentioned.