364 General Description of Lake Erie, 



shore, there is visible, for 110 miles from its east end, a bold 

 slope of woods, of smooth and uniform aspect, and divided into 

 an upper and lower bank in many places ; the latter being 

 separated from the lake by an alluvial level, considerable only 

 along its western half and at its extremities. This elevation is, 

 perhaps, understated at 600 feet; but at the middle of the 

 lake it becomes broken and variable : it, or its immediate vici- 

 nity, is the true height of land. At the east end of the lake 

 it is 25 miles distant, but from thence westward it approaches 

 the lake shore obliquely, and at Portland, 58 miles from the 

 River Niagara, it comes within three miles of it, and then fol- 

 lows its shores to the village of Erie. In this distance, the 

 narrow body of water called Lake Chatanghque, one of the 

 sources of the Alleghany (a branch of the Ohio) is only 9 J 

 miles from Lake Erie. 



A few miles westward from the disappearance of this emi- 

 nence from observers on the lake, •• it enters the state of Ohio, 

 near the dividing line of Ashtabula, and Trumbull, and Portage 

 counties diagonally. From the S.W. angle of the latter, it 

 passes along the north border of Stark and Wayne, and more 

 than half that of Richland county. From hence the ridge turns 

 S.W. as far as the Maumee River." — (Darby, p. 181, Tour.) 

 On the south and west of Lake Erie it does not often appear 

 in the actual form of hills, with intervening vales, although they 

 are common, as before said, about its middle, but spreads into 

 an extensive table land, with torpid streams contained in beds 

 elevated above the general surface of the country ; much of 

 which is prairie covered with an exuberant herbage. — (Darby.) 



Of the height of land so far traced, Mr. Shriver * has ascer- 

 tained the exact elevation in several places — his measurements, 

 however, referring to water-courses, and not to the hills which 

 may be around them. They have been made most probably 

 at the lowest points of the dividing ridge. Four miles south of 

 Warren (Trumball county) a swamp on the River Mahoning, 

 discharging its waters into Lake Erie and the Ohio, is 342 feet 

 above the former, and 35 miles distant by a direct course. — 

 (Survey, p. 71.) 



* Surveys for the Chesapeake, Ohio, and Lake Erie Canals, 1824. 



