Professor Dale of Williams College tells us that ten thousand years ago the site of North Adams and Adams was occupied by a lake some six hundred feet in depth, extending west through Williamstown and north to Stamford in Vermont. The shores of this lake are easily discoverable on the sides of the valley. The same authority also tells us that Greylock is one of the oldest mountains in the world. On its summit and in many other places in the section are clearly defined glacier scratchings. To the south between North Adams and Adams are to be found numerous low, round hills, the result of glacier actions. These same hills were early identified and examined by Professor Hitchcock of Amherst, the great geologist. The ravines and gorges are considered remarkable examples of erosion; and perched high on the mountain-sides are found immense bowlders left by the drift of floods and glaciers in by-gone ages. There is one such stone of tremendous size, high on the side of Hoosac Mountain, called the "great Vermonter," because of the probability that some centuries ago it left its moorings in the Green Mountain State and journeyed to its present location. The whole region is one of remarkable interest to the scientific observer.

The principal settlement in the township of Adams at the time of the Revolution was at the "South End." As early as 1780 the two sections began to take the names of "North End" and "South End." These designations gradually changed into "North Village" and "South Village," and finally into North Adams and South Adams.

The early church records of the township are very meagre. The early settlers, being from Connecticut and Rhode Island, for the most part, brought with them their early religious sentiments and habits. They formed a Congregational church and built a meeting-house of togs at a spot about midway between the North and South villages. This was on what is now the "Cross road"; and nearly within the limits of the present Valley Park is to be found what is probably the oldest burial place of the two settlements. The records of this church are entirely lost. All we know is that the first minister was Rev. Samuel Todd, a graduate of Yale, and that he was installed probably about 1776.

With settlements so far separated as were the North and South Ends, it was only natural that there should come rivalries and misunderstandings. As early as 1826, when after a long struggle a town house was built about midway between the two villages, there was a movement looking to a division of the township. But matters drifted along until 1878, just one hundred years after the "Plantation of East Hoosuck" became the town of Adams; and then one April morning the people awoke to find that by act of the Massachusetts Legislature the village of North Adams and all territory north of the "Old Military Line" had been set off and incorporated as a new town, to be known as North Adams. The division left South Adams with the name of the old township of Adams and a population of between five and six thousand. The new town of North Adams had about ten thousand people.

So much for the past. To-day there are in the territory of old East Hoosuck two thriving communities, — North Adams, the city, with a population of twenty-two thousand, and Adams, still with the old town government, and a population of from ten to twelve thousand. All past differences are forgotten, and the rivalries between the old mother town of Adams and the young city to the north are generous rivalries. Each rejoices in the prosperity and growth of the other, and both point with pride to the fact that their united populations, if still under one government, would show a growth greater than that of