Mohawk,
formed by the way of the Hudson the avenue of its escape to the sea.
The land must then have been greatly elevated to have permitted the
attrition over the now buried rock channels, which was necessary to
chisel out and remove, by descent, their resisting but slowly loosened
and abraded layers. From these ascertained conditions this
reconstruction of the very remote topography of this region is made,
and how it assumed its present aspect, and grew into the configuration
it now has, which fits it perfectly for human occupancy and industrial
expansion, may be told in Newberry's own suggestive sentences: " After
the lapse of unnumbered ages, during which this nook among the hills
was slowly prepared for the important part it was to play in the
history of the yet unborn being—man—a quiet subsidence of the land or
elevation of the water begun in this region. Gradually the sea flowed
in over its shores, crept up the valleys of the streams, checking their
flow and converting them into tideways, until it washed the base of
the Highlands. Up to this time the surface of the littoral plain in its
gradual submergence formed a broad expanse of shallow water bounded by
a monotonous line of beach, with no good harbors—a shifting, dangerous
shore, such as is most dreaded by mariners. By further subsidence,
however, the water flowed up into the valleys among the New York hills
and into the deeper river channels, making of the first, safe,
land-locked harbors, of the second, navigable inlets or tide-ways. In
this manner were produced the magnificent harbor and the system of
natural canals connected with it which determined the position and
created the subsequent prosperity of the commercial emporium of the
New World."
A
view of rather amazing import has been advanced by Oswald J. Heinrich,
Professor I. C. Russell, and in recent years advocated by Professor
William H. Hobbs, which affirms the union of the Triassic
formation in New Jersey with the same series of rocks in Connecticut,
the intermediate zone in New York, now entirely destitute of these
beds, having been
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