The revolt of the 13 British Colonies against their mother country and the founding of the United States began with oratory and musket fire from the peaceful countryside of New England. The town of Boston and its surrounding villages, midst stony fields and boulder fences, were the focus of the growing grumbling of discontent that finally turned into gunfire and bloodshed at Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill. Dissatisfactions with the oppressive rule of George Ill's government existed in other Colonies, but
something in the character of the people of New England seemed to make rebellion come easier. The colonists were born and bred in a glacially molded landscape, and perhaps something of its uncompromising
hard icy origin had permeated their thinking. Man is after all a creature of the Earth, and it is only natural that man's history should become mixed with the history of the Earth its geology. It is appropriate, therefore, to consider, in this year of the 200th anniversary of the birth of the Nation, the role of geology in those important events that took place around Boston
just two centuries ago.
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