Most of the primitive region on the map is broken and mountainous,
being made up of parallel ridges and detached eminences. The
strata run nearly north and south, and dip to the east at angles
between 20° and 60°. It would be easy to extend the map on the
west to the top of Hoosack mountain, since the country is all
primitive; and on the east the primitive continues, with a few
exceptions, to the ocean. The map might also be extended to the
boundary of Connecticut, by prolonging the primitive ranges with
some divergency, and colouring the intermediate space secondary,
except a narrow tract on the east side of Connecticut river, which
is alluvial. These extensions were not thought necessary.
In the town of Gill, at E, there is a cataract in Connecticut
river, from 30 to 40 feet in height; and it is believed that
the alluvial region, and part of the secondary shown on the map
from this fall to the place where the river passes between mount
Holyoke and Tom, was formerly the bed of a lake: for the logs are
still found undecayed in many places, from 10 to 20 feet below the
surface; the river has evidently worn a passage between Holyoke and
Tom: many of the hills on the northern part, and the sandstone on
the plain, bear the marks of having been washed by water, and the
channels of two rivers are still visible in Deerfield, the one 30,
and the other 100 feet above the present bed of Connecticut river.
Between mount Tom and the mountains west, there is a secondary
plain of sufficient height to throw back the water over the
supposed bed of the lake, before a passage was worn between Holyoke
and Tom. South of these hills commences another alluvial and
secondary tract, extending on both sides of the river to Haddam, in
Connecticut, where the river passes between mountains, and perhaps
this region also was the bed of a lake.
The plain on which the village of Deerfield stands, with the
adjoining meadows, is sunk 50 or 60 feet below the general alluvial
tract, and was undoubtedly the bed of a pond, or small lake, that
remained after the larger one of which we have spoken had subsided.
When this larger lake decreased, Deerfield river was cut off from
a communication with the Connecticut by the mountain CD, and the
plain extending westward from this mountain. There is a tradition,
derived from the aboriginals of Deerfield, that the passage in
which Deerfield river now runs through the mountain CD, was begun
by a squaw with a clam-shell.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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