1 36 Cincinnati Society of Natural History. 



THE GEOLOGY AND 'I'( )1'0(; KAPIIY OF GINGINNA TI. 



]5y Prof. Jos. 1"'. Jami;s, 



Custodian of Cincinnati Society Natural History. 



Part 11. 



TOPOGRAPHY. 



(Read August 3rd, 1886.) 



Turning from the Geology to the Toi)ograj)hy of the City, we 

 find many interesting features developed. The so-called hills, which 

 rise to the north, are of heights varying from three hundred and 

 ninety-six feet above low water, the stated height of Mt. Adams, 

 equal to eight hundred and twenty-eight feet above the sea, to four 

 hundred and sixty feet given for Mt. Auburn, or eight hundred and 

 ninety-one feet above the sea. 



It is almost impossible to conceive a correct idea of the ap- 

 pearance of the site of Cincinnati before it became a city. The 

 pictures we have, which pretenrl to show its appearance in 1802, or 

 fourteen years after its first settlement, represent the two terraces to 

 be nearly bare of trees, a few clumps appearing here and there 

 only, but the hills and valleys to the north are represented as 

 densely clothed with forest trees. They recede from the river to 

 the westward, and in one view six elevations are shown with depres- 

 sions between them. These hills, as we may for convenience call 

 them, were originally rounded on top, and with sloping sides, but 

 are now so cut away and seared with streets as to have lost much of 

 their original form. 



There still remain, however, the great drainage valleys which 

 have, for ages, carried the water from the north, south into the 

 Ohio river. None of them, except Mill Creek, which, as shown 

 in the first part of this paper, now occupies part of the ancient 

 channel of the Ohio, are of any great extent, and this is one fact 

 tending to jjiove the former insular character of the sul>urban parts 

 of Cincinnati. The most eastern one of these valleys emptying 

 into the Ohio is Crawfish Creek. This divides Mt. Lookout from 

 Walnut Hills, forming a broad jjlain at its mouth, always overflowed 

 by high water in the Ohio, and it heads up several miles in the 

 country, now covered by part of East Walnut Hill^. 



