11 



Valley. The Ohio flows in a narrow valley as far as Utica, a- 

 bove Louisville. This valley averages about one mile in breadth, 

 and about three hundred feet in depth, but in sgimo parts it ia 

 nearly five hundred teet deep. There are evident proofs that 

 the river has formerly filled it. The sides are formed by steep 

 cliffs and hills of sandstone as far as Vanceburg and the knobs 

 below the mouth of the Scioto; beyond which all the strata are 

 of limestone. Beyond those cliffs the country is broken, but 

 much raised above the bottom of the Ohio Valley. The river 

 meanders through it, leaving on each side, or only on one side, 

 a level tract of alluvial and deep soil, which are called bottoms 

 and were once the bed of the river. The cliffs correspond to- 

 gether, keeping at a* equal distance, and every salient angle 

 or elbow has an opposite bend. Below Utica and as far as Ot- 

 ter creek below Salt river begins the site of an ancient Lake, 

 forming now a plain, which is about twenty-five miles long and 

 ten miles broad; the falls are situated in the middle of it: the 

 silver hills bound it to the west, the knobby hills to the east and 

 the barren hills to the south. Immediately below it are the 

 narrows of Otter creek, where the valley begins again; but is 

 not larger than at Pittsburgh, being hardly half a mile wide and 

 the river is less than one thousand feet across. They both ex- 

 pand gradually until they reach the rocky narrows above Troy, 

 where the valley, after being contracted to three fourths of a 

 mile, while the river is nearly half a mile broad, expands at 

 once into a low country or broad valley, (the river being often 

 one mile wide) which was formerly a second lake, extending 

 about one hundred miles to Cave-hill narrows, with a variable 

 breadth of four to twenty miles; only a few bluffs appearing oc- 

 casionally on the banks, and the boundary hills being only one 

 hundred and fifty feet high on an average. At Cave-hill or 

 Cave in the rock, the river, from a mile broad, becomes at once 

 very narrow, and the hills come very near the banks on both 

 sides, forming a short narrows, below v/hich stands another 

 plain, which was once a third Lake, about twelve miles long 

 and six miles wide: it ends at Grand Pierre creek, and the broad 

 narrows between the north and south bluffs. Here begins the 

 lowest part of the Ohio Valley, which grows wide gradually 



