The National Geographic Magazine, Vol. I., No. 3, July, 1889Various
Science
The National Geographic Magazine, Vol. I., No. 3, July, 1889
Various
Geography -- Periodicals
The sufficient reason for the assumption that the embryonic Susquehanna
lay farther west than the present one in the neighborhood of the Pocono
synclinals is simply that--in the absence of any antecedent stream--it
must have lain there. The whole explanation of the development of the
Siluro-Devonian lowlands between the Pocono and Medina ridges depends
simply on their being weathered out where the rocks are weak enough to
waste faster than the enclosing harder ridges through which the streams
escape. In this process, the streams exercise no control whatever over
the direction in which their headwaters shall grow; they leave this
entirely to the structure of the district that they drain. It thus
appears that, under the postulate as to the initial location of the
Susquehanna as one of the many streams descending the great slope of
the Kittatinny (Cumberland) highland into the Swatara syncline, its
course being reversed from northward to southward by the Newark
depression, we are required to suppose that its headwater (northward)
growth at the time of the Jurassic elevation must have been on the
Siluro-Devonian beds, so as to avoid the harder rocks on either side.
Many streams competed for the distinction of becoming the master, and
that one gained its ambition whose initial location gave it the best
subsequent opportunity. It remains then to consider the means by which
the course of the conquering Susquehanna may have been subsequently
changed from the lowlands on to the two Pocono synclines that it now
traverses. Some departure from its early location may have been due to
eastward planation in its advanced age, when it had large volume and
gentle slope and was therefore swinging and cutting laterally in its
lower course. This may have had a share in the result, but there is
another process that seems to me more effective.
In the latter part of the Jura-Cretaceous cycle, the whole country
hereabout suffered a moderate depression, by which the Atlantic
transgressed many miles inland from its former shoreline, across the
lowlands of erosion that had been developed on the litoral belt. Such a
depression must have had a distinct effect on the lower courses of the
larger rivers, which having already cut their channels down close to
baselevel and opened their valleys wide on the softer rocks, were then
"estuaried," or at least so far checked as to build wide flood-plains
over their lower stretches. Indeed, the flood-plains may have been
begun at an earlier date, and have been confirmed and extended in the
later time of depression. Is it possible that in the latest stage of
this process, the almost baselevelled remnants of Blue mountain and the
Pocono ridges could have been buried under the flood-plain in the
neighborhood of the river?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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