Orange and Ulster counties in the state of New York, are situated westward of the Hudson and northward of West Point; from the Shawangunk mountain, which is a long ridge east of the blue mountains, they appear as an immense plain, bounded on every side by stupendous mountains, the situation of which certainly tend to confirm the authenticity of an Indian tradition, which states them formerly to have been the boundaries of a great lake; and it would now be a lake if the high mountains on each side of the Hudson near West Point were united, as probably they may have been. It is a fact that all over the country, the stones, which in a curious manner are strewed over the ground, from the largest to the smallest, have been worn round by long-continued friction, as if by the agitation of water; more particularly in the lowest and flat situations, where the stones are larger, and gradually becoming smaller in the higher situations. The surface of the country, though by no means so level as it appears from the mountains, is formed of single hills, prominences, or swelling knolls, which have the appearance of having been caused by the agitation of water. Many of the cavities between these knolls are dry, others are in the state of ponds, but an infinite number contain morasses, which must originally have been ponds, supplied by springs which still flow at their bottoms, and filled, in the course of ages, with a succession of shellfish and the decay of vegetables; so that at present they are covered with timber, and have been so within the memory of man. An old man, upwards of sixty, informed us, that all the difference he could remark between these morasses now and what they were fifty years ago, was, that then they were generally covered with firs, and now with beech. This was verified by the branches and logs of fir which we found in digging; many pieces of which had been cut by beavers, the former inhabitants of these places when in the state of ponds. Scarcely a fir is now to be found in the country.