... With Dr. Hutton, we shall be disposed to consider those great chains of mountains, which traverse the surface of the globe, as cut out of masses vastly greater, and more lofty than any thing that now remains.
From this gradual change of lakes into rivers, it follows, that a lake is but a temporary and accidental condition of a river, which is every day approaching to its termination; and the truth of this is attested, not only by the lakes that have existed, but also by those that continue to exist.”
Steps Backward.
Even Hutton’s clear reasoning, firmly buttressed by concrete examples, was insufficient to overcome the belief in ready-made or violently formed valleys and original corrugations and irregularities of mountain surface. The pages of the Journal show that the principles laid down by Playfair were too far in advance of the times to secure general acceptance. In the first volume of the Journal, the gorge of the French Broad River is assigned by Kain to “some dreadful commotion in nature which probably shook these mountains to their bases,”[[7]] and the gorge of the lower Connecticut is considered by Hitchcock (1824)[[8]] as a breach which drained a series of lakes “not many centuries before the settlement of this country.” The prevailing American and English view for the first quarter of the nineteenth century is expressed in the reviews in this Journal, where the well-known conclusions of Conybeare and Phillips that streams are incompetent to excavate valleys are quoted with approval and admiration is expressed for Buckland’s famous “Reliquiæ Diluvianæ,” a 300–page quarto volume devoted to proof of a deluge. The professor at Yale, Silliman, and the professor at Oxford, Buckland, saw that an acceptance of Hutton’s views involved a repudiation of the Biblical flood, and much space is devoted to combating these “erroneous” and “unscientific” views. For example, Buckland says:[[9]]
“... The general belief is, that existing streams, avalanches and lakes, bursting their barriers, are sufficient to account for all their phenomena, and not a few geologists, especially those of the Huttonian school, at whose head is Professor Playfair, have till recently been of this opinion.... But it is now very clear to almost every man, who impartially examines the facts in regard to existing vallies, that the causes now in action, mentioned above, are altogether inadequate to their production; nay, that such a supposition would involve a physical impossibility. We do not believe that one-thousandth part of our present vallies were excavated by the power of existing streams.... In very many cases of large rivers, it is found, that so far from having formed their own beds, they are actually in a gradual manner filling them up.
Again; how happens it that the source of a river is frequently below the head of a valley, if the river excavated that valley?
The most powerful argument, however, in our opinion, against the supposition we are combating, is the phenomena of transverse and longitudinal valleys; both of which could not possibly have been formed by existing streams.”
Phillips writes in 1829:[[10]] “The excavation of valleys can be ascribed to no other cause than a great flood of water which overtopped the hills, whose summits those vallies descend.”
Faith in Noah’s flood as the dominant agent of erosion rapidly lost ground through the teaching of Lyell after 1830, but the theory of systematic development of landscapes by rivers gained little. In fact, Scrope in 1830,[[11]] in showing that the entrenched meanders of the Moselle prove gradual progressive stream work, was in advance of his English contemporary. Judged by contributions to the Journal, Lyell’s teaching served to standardize American opinion of earth sculpture somewhat as follows: The ocean is the great valley maker, but rivers also make them; the position of valleys is determined by original or renewed surface inequalities or by faulting; exceptional occurrences—earthquakes, bursting of lakes, upheavals and depressions—have played an important part. Hayes (1839)[[12]] thought that the surface of New York was essentially an upraised sea-bottom modified by erosion of waves and ocean currents. Sedgwick (1838)[[13]] considered high-lying lake basins proof of valleys which were shaped under the sea. Many of the valleys in the Chilian Cordillera were thought by Darwin (1844) to have been the work of waves and tides, and water gaps are ascribed to currents “bursting through the range at those points where the strata have been least inclined and the height consequently is less.” Speaking of the magnificent stream-cut canyons of the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, gorges which lead to narrow exits through monoclines, Darwin says: “To attribute these hollows to alluvial action would be preposterous.”[[14]]
The influence of structure in the formation of valleys is emphasized by many contributors to the Journal. Hildreth in 1836, in a valuable paper,[[15]] which is perhaps the first detailed topographic description of drainage in folded strata, expresses the opinion that the West Virginia ridges and valleys antedated the streams and that water gaps though cut by rivers involve pre-existing lakes. Geddes (1826)[[16]] denied that Niagara River cut its channel and speaks of valleys which “were valleys e’er moving spirit bade the waters flow.” Conrad (1839)[[17]] discussed the structural control of the Mohawk, the Ohio, and the Mississippi, and Lieutenant Warren (1859)[[18]] concluded that the Niobrara must have originated in a fissure. According to Lesley (1862)[[19]] the course of the New River across the Great Valley and into the Appalachians “striking the escarpment in the face” is determined by the junction of anticlinal structures on the north with faulted monoclines toward the south; a conclusion in harmony with the views of Edward Hitchcock (1841)[[17]] that major valleys and mountain passes are structural in origin and that even subordinate folds and faults may determine minor features. “Is not this a beautiful example of prospective benevolence on the part of the Deity, thus, by means of a violent fracture of primary mountains, to provide for easy intercommunication through alpine regions, countless ages afterwards!” The extent of the wandering from the guidance of DeSaussure and Playfair after the lapse of 50 years is shown by students of Switzerland. Alpine valleys to Murchison (1851) were bays of an ancient sea; Schlaginweit (1852) found regional and local complicated crustal movements a satisfactory cause, and Forbes (1863) saw only glaciers.