Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1802).djvu/294

280 the tremendous rocks, which are left with one end fixed in the precipice, and the other jutting out, and ſemingly ready to fall for want of ſupport; the bed of the river for ſeveral miles below obſtructed, and filled with the looſe ſtones carried from this mound; in ſhort, every thing on which you caſt your eye evidently demonſtrates a diſrupture and breach in the mountain, and that, before this happened, what is now a fruitful vale, was formerly a great lake or collection of water, which poſſibly might have here formed a mighty caſcade, or had its vent to the ocean by the Suſquehanna, where the Blue ridge ſeems to terminate. Beſides this, there are other parts of this country which bear evident traces of a like convulſion. From the beſt accounts I have been able to obtain, the place where the Delaware now flows through the Kittatinny mountain, which is a continuation of what is called the North ridge, or mountain, was not its original courſe, but that it paſſed through what is now called ‘the Wind-gap,’ a place ſeveral miles to the weſtward, and above an hundred feet higher than the preſent bed of the river. This Wind-gap is about a mile broad, and the ſtones in it ſuch as ſeem to have been waſhed for ages by water running over them. Should this have been the caſe, there muſt have been a large lake behind that mountain, and by ſome uncommon ſwell in the waters, or by ſome convulſion of nature the river muſt have opened its way through a different part of the mountain, and meeting there with leſs obſtruction, carried away with it the oppoſing mounds of earth and deluged the country below with the immenſe collection of waters to which