The National Geographic Magazine, Vol. II., No. 2, May, 1890Various
Science
The National Geographic Magazine, Vol. II., No. 2, May, 1890
Various
Geography -- Periodicals
The Musconetcong may be taken as the type of the Highland streams. It
flows southwestward along a narrow limestone valley between crystalline
plateaus on either side, entering the Delaware a little below Easton,
Pa., (E, fig. 1). It drains a country that has been enormously denuded,
and during the Jura-Cretaceous cycle of this deep denudation, there
must have been time for it and its fellows to become thoroughly
adjusted to the structure of the region; it must be chiefly for this
reason that it flows so closely along the weak limestone belt, and has
its divides close by on the adjoining harder crystallines, (M, fig. 2).
Whatever its origin, it has lost every initial feature that was
discordant with the deep structures that it discovered beneath the
initial surface; it is maturely adjusted to its environment. It endured
to an old age during the baselevelling of the Schooley peneplain, and
is now a "revived" stream, in at least its second cycle of work. Most
of the other streams of the Highlands and the country farther inland
are also of this well adjusted, revived kind. The streams of the
Kittatinny valley lowland show not only the first revival of the kind
just described, but also a second revival, in consequence of the recent
uplift that has introduced the third cycle of development; this not
being so clearly manifested in the Highlands, where the rocks are
harder, and the valleys of the second cycle are narrower.
Look now at the drainage of the crescentic Watchung mountains; the
curved edges of two great warped lava-flows of the Triassic belt. The
noteworthy feature of this district is that the small streams in the
southern part of the crescent rise on the back slope of the inner
mountain and cut gaps in both mountains in order to reach the outer
part of the Central Plain. If these streams were descended directly or
by revival from ancestors antecedent to or consequent upon the
monoclinal tilting of the Triassic formation, they could not possibly,
in the long time and deep denudation that the region has endured, have
down to the present time maintained courses so little adjusted to the
structure of their basins. In so long a time as has elapsed since the
tilting of the Triassic formation, the divides would have taken their
places on the crest of the trap ridges and not behind the crest on the
back slope. They cannot be subsequent streams, for such could not have
pushed their sources headwards through a hard trap ridge. Subsequent
streams are developed in accordance with structural details, not in
violation of them. Their courses must have been taken _not long ago_,
else they must surely have lost their heads back of the second
mountain; some piratical subsequent branch of a larger transverse
stream, like the Passaic, would have beheaded them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account