News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1888-03-15
A PREHISTORIC HUDSON.
1t Took in the Housatonic and Jersey
Rivers and Emptied Eighty Miles
out to Sea,

''The Geology of New York and It's
| Environs" was the title of most inter-
| esting paper read by Prof. Daniel S.
Martin, before the New York Academy
of Sciences, in Hamilton Hall, Columbia
College.
After reviewing the great deposits in
| the vicinity of New York of gneiss,
| brown sandstone, serpentine, trap and
sand, gravel and boulder beds of the
Glacial period, when, hundreds of thou
sands of years ago the whole of the
northern portion of the United States
was covered by an immense sheet of ice
stretching northward to the Pole, Prof.
Martin said:
''With regard to the changes of level
since the Tertiary-the last great geo.
logical age-there are interesting evil
dences of various kinds in and around
New York, though not conspicuous to
the eye. The great and long duration
which preceded, in part, at least, ac-
companied the Glacial period, has left
its unmistakable record in the deeply
excavated river valleys on both sides of
the city, and in the depressed channel
revealed by sOundings, which shows us
that the Hudson then reached the sea
some eighty miles southeast of the pres
ent mouth of the harbor.
'Pre glacial New York presented a
very different aspect from what it does
now, and one far more bold and roman
tic in its scenery. The island itself was
rocky promontory, some 300 feet high,
and the wall of the Palisades on the
west side of the Hudson rose to 700feet;
while in the gorge between these lofty
course, though far below.
"On the east of the island, between it
and the rocky heights which now are
sunk and buried beneath the drift-or
debris of the ancient glacier-of North
western Long Island, another river
flowed to join the Hudson from the
northeast. This river was a continue
ton of the HousatOnic and carried the
drainage of southwest New England,
along the bed of the present Sound and
the upper bay and were joined by the
current flowed on through lofty rocky
islands, where now are the gentle hills of
Staten Island and the low inlets of the
upper bay and entered great lowland
plain, through which it pursued its
course nearly 100 miles to the ocean.
'Then slowly came on the Great Ice
Age; and the great ice mantel covered
al and left its impress so plain that 'he
who runs may read. Finally the con-
ditions changed, and the great elevation |
was followed by depression to thu pres |
ent level, and then by subsistence below |
it. In this Champlain depression,
though scarcely sufficient at this point |
10 have traces over the island, yet the !
river channels were filed |
Up to depth of 300 to 400 feet; so that
low the Hudson-like most of the rivers
# the North-fowed in its old course,
indeed, but far above its former rocky
Jed. The same cause has made the
tributary streams of New Jersey and
Independent rivers, and
pread the broad New York bay and the
ide-channels of the East River, and the
Iuiet waters of the Sound, over wide
rea of pre-glacial land, and the ocean
'ver all the literal coast plain. Again
here was an elevation, but at the present
ime the movement seems to be again
downward, and the sea is slowly en-
on the land.
Sin the projected tunnel beneath the
Hudson River it is of interest to note
hat the work, though carried on many
Yards below the bed of the river, was
entirely in hard clay, with recent marine
;hells-the latter portion of the post
glacial filling up the channel. Nowhere
was rock encountered or approached;
and the same is true of the excavations
for the caissons on which were laid the
piers of the Brooklyn Bridge.