Identifier: capecodoldcolony1921brig (find matches)
Title: Cape Cod and the Old colony
Year: 1921 (1920s)
Authors: Brigham, Albert Perry, 1855-1932
Subjects: Pilgrims (New Plymouth Colony) Cape Cod (Mass.)
Publisher: New York and London, G.P. Putnam's Sons
Contributing Library: University of Connecticut Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Connecticut Libraries

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outhinto Bourne, has been attacked by the wavesof the Bay, and the results are seen in theboulder pavements of its beaches and in thecliffs that rise above them. Edward Hitchcock was the distinguishedPresident of Amherst College. He was alsoone of the great geologists in the earlier daysof that science and about seventy years agohe put forth a report on the geology of Massa-chusetts, in two quarto volimies. He did notin this classic doctmient venture much aboutCape Cod, but he had an open and fertilemind, he had been reading Agassiz and SirCharles Lyell, and had gained some knowledgeof the startling glacial theory with which thesemen had set Europe thinking. Hitchcockpondered what he had seen on the Cape andput a postscript into his preface, including thisremarkable paragraph. Is it possible that the whole of Cape Codis nothing but a vast terminal moraine, pro-duced by a glacier advancing through Massa-chusetts Bay and scooping out the materialsthat now form the Cape? In this case the
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The Origin of the Cape 47 moraines at Plymouth and Truro would forma part of the lateral moraines, and probably-most of Nantucket and Marthas Vineyardmight be regarded as moraines of the sameglacier, when it extended farther south. In a time when ice sheets were subjects forconfused wonderment, much ignorance andsome skepticism, this may almost be called anutterance of genius, for we, with the harvestof a thousand workers gathered in our hand,can ill appreciate the grasp, we might say, thedaring of this great observer. It is no specialcredit to the physiographer of to-day that heis able to go into further explanation and tocorrect in some particulars the interpretationof Dr. Hitchcock. Making sure of main facts—the reader prob-ably knows that one of the great centers ofice movement in North America was in theLabrador peninsula, east of Hudson Bay.There centered an ice sheet known to glacialstudents as the Laurentian or Labrador flow.From that central region moved the ice south-ward

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