[GEOGRAPHICAL FORMATION OF THE VALLEY.]
Before entering into a detail relative to the settlement of this town by Europeans, the causes of their emigration from the fatherland, their manner of life in this then wilderness part of our country, &c., &c., I will give my views of what I consider to have been anteriorly the geographical face of this district of territory, its productions and its native inhabitants.
The present form of the surface of the earth teaches us that there has been a time when it was in many places very different from what it is at this day. This appears to be the case wherever there are rivers and streams of water; and we have reason to think that many lakes and ponds have been drained by the action of streams of water issuing therefrom. It must be the case that there was a time when the surface of the ground in the valley along the Neversink and Delaware rivers in this town, together with that part of it which extends southwest to the gap of the mountain, where the Delaware passes through it, and northeast to the North river, &c., laid below the bottom of a lake of water. This opinion has been formed previous to my contemplations respecting it. Eager gives some account of this in his "History of Orange County," pages 407 and 408, and sufficiently establishes the fact from Indian tradition, &c.
Not only does the gap of the mountain, where the river passes through it, exhibit strong reasons of a passage being worn through it by the action of the water of a lake in this valley, but the knolls and low hills in this valley show that they have undergone much washing of water; and, what appears somewhat mysterious, hills thirty and forty feet higher than the surface of the river flats are all composed of ground, gravel, sand and such smooth stones as are in the bottoms of rivers, from which it appears that not only the surface of those hills, but that all the materials of which they are composed, have for some length of time been water-washed. We find in them some places of clear sand, not mixed with the other materials mentioned, such as is in river sand banks; from which we have reason to conjecture that after the water received a passage through the mountain it created a current in the lake towards it, and as that passage enlarged and wore down, the water in the lake drew off and the current of its stream increased and washed the highest parts of its bottom down into the hollows, where the water was deep, and thereby run down gradually large bodies of water-washed stones, gravel, sand and ground from the highest elevations of the bottom surface into its lowest parts, many of which have remained where they have been carried by the waters, and the adjoining ground, which first was highest, has run down the stream and continued to be moved down until a gradual descent of the rivers was formed, on a bottom of smooth water-washed stones, gravel and sand, which now lie at different depths below the surface of the river flats, viz.: from about four to seven and eight feet below that of the lands along the Neversink river, and at greater depths along the surface of the Delaware river flats.
After a river bottom was formed where the flats now are, the stream creating meandering channels through those river bottom flats would contain the water of the rivers when low, but in freshets, overflow the flat bottoms, whereby in every freshet a part of the ground which the water carried down in such times, lodged on the surface of those flats, which, continuing to accumulate in this way for a great length of time, raised the surface so high that the freshets did not overflow it, unless partially in uncommon high water; and as the waters became more and more confined in stationary channels, the bottoms of these wore down by the action and weight of the water. In this manner undoubtedly was formed the soil of our river lands. In the vicinity of the gap of the Shawangunk mountain, through which the New York & Erie Railroad passes, are indications in some places on the east side of the mountain of the surface of the ground having in a very remote period of time been under water, when I contemplate it ran through this gap into the valley west of the mountain into a lake which has been mentioned.
All rivers and streams have formed the grade of their bottoms from their summits toward the ocean according to their magnitude, and the original formation of the respective districts of country through which they pass.
The river flats, amounting to about three or four thousand acres, was nearly all the land in this town which the first pioneers considered to be of any value for agricultural purposes, the residue being generally mountainous, rough, stony land, was by them considered to be of no value for farming purposes.
[PLENTIFUL SUPPLY OF GAME, FISH, FRUIT, ETC.]
This district of territory which the small town of Deerpark now embraces, when the Indians were its sole proprietors, was a very plentiful place for Indian life when first discovered by Europeans. The fiats, covered with a tall grass from four to six feet high, and the same and surrounding woods, often burned over, abounded with numerous deer, bears, raccoons, and many smaller animals suitable for the sustenance of men, also with turkeys, ducks, partridges and other birds suitable for man's diet. Generally in the spring of the year vast numbers of pigeons passed over here to the northeast, vast flocks of which generally lighted on the trees and ground to get food, which gave opportunities of killing some of them. The rivers and brooks teemed with different kinds of fishes, such as trout, pike, chubs, suckers, sunfish, catfish and eels, and numerous shad in the spring season in both the Delaware and the Neversink rivers, in the latter of which they ran up about five miles, which distance then generally was deep water and extended to where David Swartwout now lives; [FN] these fish were caught by bush seines, and in the Delaware river were also many rockfish, which were taken in the fall of the year by means of eel-weirs and bush seines, some of which were the largest fish in this part of that river. Also, there were, and still are, different kinds of nuts, such as white walnuts, hickory nuts, chestnuts, butternuts, hazelnuts; also various kinds of fruit and berries, to wit: large and small grapes, plums, black and red wild cherries, huckleberries, strawberries, black and red raspberries, blackberries of two or more kinds, and wintergreen berries. Such was this district of country and its productions when our forefathers came here, so that they could obtain a plentiful supply of the best of wild meats of animals, fowls and fishes, and, by the cultivation of small portions of their lands, they could obtain a supply of grain, roots and other vegetables. They could not do much at farming before the children of these first families became able to assist in that business. At this early period of their settlement they pounded their grain for such bread, cakes and soups as they made in those times, for doing which they procured pounding stones from the Indians, who manufactured them, and made or obtained from the Indians pounding blocks from one and a half to two and a half feet long, and about ten inches in diameter, in one end of which a suitable round cavity was burned in which to pound their grain, coarse salt, &c. The Indians manufactured both the stones and blocks in good style.