A great many years ago the climate of North America became so cold that the snow of winter did not melt wholly away in the summer. Thus every year banks of snow grew deeper, until they covered the whole northern part of the continent with an unbroken blanket. As the snow grew deeper, it packed down underneath, until it became ice. Along the edges the ice melted away, but in the middle and toward the north it kept increasing in thickness, until it was thousands of feet thick. From this thickest part it slowly crept outward to the sea on the east, where it broke off in great icebergs, which floated away to melt in the Atlantic. The edge of the ice was many miles east of the present shoreline, so that Cape Ann was buried under thick ice moving slowly southward toward the sea. By this great ice-sheet all plants were killed. All animals were forced to migrate to the south, unless they could get their living from the sea. The ice pushed along all loose rocks, and swept the solid rock clean of ail gravel and soil. Then it scratched the rocks beneath, and these scratches may be seen wherever the dirt is dug away from the rocks. They always run from northwest to south-east, as straight as if they were drawn with a ruler. By and by the climate grew warmer again. The ice retreated toward the north. The retreat was not steady, but varied according to the weather. After a severe winter it would push forward a little, only to melt back again if the next winter was mild. Some-times the edge of the ice remained for a good many years at the same pace. The present appearance of the land about here is largely the result of the changing conditions of the time, when the ice was slowly melting away for the last time. If the ice-edge advanced a little into the piles of boulders which it had left behind, it would push them up into windrows, which are called moraines. Several such moraines are found on Cape Ann. Lamb Ledge near Perkins street, Raccoon Ledge on Dogtown, and the great piles of boulders back of the Sawyer school are examples. Piles of gravel pushed up in the same way are called kames. A fine one may be seen on the south side of the railroad track half way between Rock-port and Gloucester. Near the Rockport station is an "esker" formed, it is supposed, in a tunnel under the ice. The water running out at the ice-front made this tunnel. Then it became choked with gravel and pebbles. After the ice melted away, it was left as a long, narrow mound. Sometimes the thin edge of the ice, moving forward a short distance. instead of pushing a pile of gravel away, slid up over it, rounding it off to a beautiful oval hill. Such hills are called drumlins. Pigeon Hill was made in this way.
As the ice meted away, plants began to grow again and the animals returned from the south. Whether there were any men in America before i efore the ice-age is not certain, but after the ice-age it is ed that men came to live in the land where the ice had been. Cape Ann was then not quite so high as now, so that the ocean filled the lower valleys. Old beaches may now be found many feet up hillsides. The early inhabitants of America seem to have migrated to America, many thousand years ago. They resemble the people of eastern Asia, more than those of Europe, and the distance between Alaska and Siberia is small. When first seen by white men, they were still savage. They had no records or even reliable traditions. They had no government. Their farming, carried on almost wholly by the women, furnished them with Indian corn and a few vegetables, but their main reliance was hunting and fishing. They lived in little villages of deerskin wigwams, scattered about in the woods of Cape Ann. They paddled in birch-bark canoes over its waters and rambled on hunting trips through its woods. Often they were raided in the fail by Indians from Maine, who could not raise corn and came to steal that of the more fortunate Massachusetts Indians. All the New England Indians, and many others, were of the Algonquin family. Their language as put into writing may be seen in the old Bibles printed for them by missionaries in the 17th century, but it is said that scarcely anyone can now read it. From this language comes many names of places scattered over a large part of North America. The only one on Cape Ann is Annisquam. Stone arrow-heads, hatchets, spear-heads, sinkers, pestles and many other tools have been found on Cape Ann. There are also shell-heaps near the clam-flats; for the clams furnished a never-failing food supply. Long before the coming of the first English settlers, Indians were acquainted with whites; for white traders, fishermen, and explorers sailed along the coast. From some traders the Indians of the M i Massachusetts coast, about 1617, caught some contagious disease—it is not certain what—and so many of them died that the first settlers found almost none here. Therefore, the Indians are not mentioned at all in connection with the early settlement of Gloucester. Only the name Annisquam, and the fact that the town many years later paid some money to an Indian for his claim to land here, seem to show that a few must have been here in 1623.
RALPH P. PARSONS.