Its great trough bears evidence
of having been worn to its present dimensions by much swifter and
stronger currents than those that course through it now. To this
gradual subsidence in connection with the great changes wrought by the
huge glacier that crept down from the north during what is called the
ice period, is owing the character and aspects of the Hudson as we see
and know them. The Mohawk Valley was filled up by the drift, the Great
Lakes scooped out, and an opening for their pent-up waters found
through what is now the St. Lawrence. The trough of the Hudson was
also partially filled and has remained so to the present day. There
is, perhaps, no point in the river where the mud and clay are not from
two to three times as deep as the water. That ancient and grander
Hudson lies back of us several hundred thousand years--perhaps more,
for a million years are but as one tick of the time-piece of the Lord;
yet even _it_ was a juvenile compared with some of the rocks and
mountains which the Hudson of to-day mirrors. The Highlands date
from the earliest geological race--the primary; the river--the old
river--from the latest, the tertiary; and what that difference
means in terrestrial years hath not entered into the mind of man to
conceive.
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