Branner.l o£>& [Feb. 19, 



current of the stream that now runs through them. The force of the 

 stream, even when it is swollen to unusual dimensions, is quite broken by 

 the time it reaches these holes, by the large and small fragments through 

 and over which it flows. It cannot stir the stones in these holes, and con- 

 sequently it is incapable at present of wearing them. A little further to 

 the west a reservoir dam has been built across the stream, and, for some 

 distance along the pipe line leading from it, the bed rock has been uncov- 

 ered, in places more than one hundred feet above the stream, as it flows 

 below the reservoir. This uncovered surface has the soft, half-decayed 

 and smoothly rounded appearance characteristic of the rocks in the beds 

 of streams, or where they have been worn by water set with stones. 

 There is no confusing this peculiar smoothing of the surface with that- 

 done by ice — a subject referred to below. 



The form of the ravine through which this stream now runs, the charac- 

 ter of the debris which fills it, the pot-holes so far below the present posi- 

 tion of the fall, and the water-worn surface of the rocks even below these 

 pools are evidences that the falls were once farther to the south-west than 

 at present. But as the conglomerate here dips to the north and north- 

 west, the ledge over which it falls must have been proportionately higher 

 than at present. 



Such an elevation of this conglomerate rim — say ten to fifteen feet — 

 would back the water of Black creek until it would leave its present chan- 

 nel near where the road crosses the narrow-gauge railway track, a quarter 

 of a mile above the head of the West End breaker, and send it to the right 

 down the gap through, or near, which the railway is built.* 



Further evidence that the water once followed the course mentioned is 

 found in the fact that, in mining beneath this old channel, either a pot- 

 hole or the bed of an ancient stream, filled with sand and water-worn drift 

 materia], was cut into by the miners of the West End colliery. The 

 material in this hole was struck some twenty (?) feet below the present 

 surface, but as the workings were abandoned in its immediate vicinity, on 

 account of the inconvenience caused by it, no further developments were 

 made that throw light upon the origin or character of this hole or channel. 

 The removal of some of the drift from the bottom of the mass caused a 

 falling in of the surface. This surface depression made by the hole may 

 be seen north of the track near, and just west of the crossing of the rail- 

 way track and the dirt road. 



But this gorge, if it did exist, was a very narrow one. and easily choked 

 up, and when the floods of the ice age poured over the water-shed at 

 Uplinger's and near the Mountain Inn, the stream down Black Creek val- 

 ley was probably too large to flow readily through this narrow channel, 

 and so it swept over the low conglomerate barrier which stood more 

 directly in its pathway, and soon wore for itself a broader channel, 

 smoothed the rocks below the falls, and ground out the pot-holes. 



* The railway does not run exactly through the original gap. This has been 

 quite filled up by drift and debris from the overhanging elid's, and the railway 

 passes through a cut a little to the south of the old channel. 



