Page:History of Barrington, Rhode Island (Bicknell).djvu/21

Rh called "the bottomless pond," was probably formed by stranded ice, which finally melted away, leaving a deep hole where it lay, which has become partially filled by the wash from the hills around. The bog on the north and east of Prince's Pond which is a fine quality of peat from five to twelve feet thick, and was formerly used for fuel in Barrington, is a vegetable deposit, which has accumulated simultaneously with the deposit of other soils, on the upper surface of the glacial drifts. The clay under the swamps at Nayatt and along the Mouscochuck Creek, used so extensively for brick-making, was a deposit of the finer flour-like grinding of the glacier, and is usually found in the vicinity of morasses. In due time, after the melting away of the glacier and the approach of the warm period, vegetation began to appear such as lichens, mosses and ferns; then the firs, spruces, hemlocks, and pines; and most likely a large torrid growth, until the land about us had become fit, by the creation of soil, for man's use and habitation. Imagination cannot picture the beasts, birds, reptiles, and insects of the forests, the fishes that swam in our streams, and amphibians that sported on their banks. Man came at last and found it much as we see it to-day, only changed in this that the land was covered with forests, and the seasons quite unlike ours. Who was the first Barringtonian we leave for some follower of Darwin to tell us, whether he descended from the gods or ascended from the apes. Certain it is that he must have thanked his stars as we do that his lines were cast on so goodly shores and that he had such a lovely heritage.

Hundred Acre Cove, at the head of Barrington River, has been a puzzle to many, geologically, from the fact that the bottom of the cove shows indisputable evidence of having once been a pine forest. The stumps, roots, and trunks of pines can be seen now in various parts of the cove, and the stump fences on New Meadow Neck were drawn from the shores and waters of the cove. What is the explanation? At the close of the ice age this cove was probably like Prince's Pond the resting place of a vast ice fragment, which