plausible explanation was that glaciation had advanced southward with a mighty blade of ice, scraping away saprolite as it came and leaving drift when it left. The reason why southern latitudes have such different surface materials was because glaciation simply didn't get that far.

Earthquakes and Faults

On the 16th of May, 1791, in Moodus, Connecticut, the calm of twilight was shattered by a great shaking of the ground. A few years later, a local pastor prepared this composite description of the events of that night, drawn from the accounts of eyewitnesses.

It began at 8 o'clock, P.M. with two very heavy shocks in quick succession. The first was the most powerful; the earth appeared to undergo very violent convulsions. The stone walls were thrown down, chimneys were untopped, doors which were latched were thrown open, and a fissure in the ground of several rods in extent was afterwards discovered . . . This shock was felt at a great distance. It was so severe at Killingworth (about 20 miles distant), that a Captain Benedict, who was walking the deck of his vessel, then lying in the harbor of that place, observed the fish to leap out of water in every direction as far as his eye could reach.¹¹

This was the worst of a long history of shakes, shivers, jolts, and jiggles that have been felt in Moodus over the last four centuries. Usually, these earth tremors have been associated with loud rumbling noises variously described by those who have experienced them as "strange bellowing" (Reverend Jeremiah Hobart, in 1702) and "the noise of a cannon shot, or severe thunder" (Reverend Stephen Hosmer, in 1729).¹² John De Forest, a mid-1800s historian, gave the most dramatic description:

Even of late years, strange noises and rumblings are said to have been heard at times in the bowels of this mountain [Mount Tom, a hill in

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