SAO: 
This valley was the great outlet to Lake Huron, as the Wabash Valley 
was the outlet to Lake Erie during glacial times. This great valley, with 
its flood plain, varies from three miles at its narrowest point, which is 
one mile below South Bend, to about twenty at its broadest part, which 
is between Porter and Lake on the north and Newton and Jasper counties 
on the south. The south bank of the valley from about six miles below 
South Bend to near its source is from fifty to one hundred feet high, while 
the north bank from South Bend to its source is generally low and shelvy- 
ing. From South Bend to the Illinois line, or from the point where the 
valley emerges from between the Maumee and Michigan moraines to its 
confluence with the Desplaines, the banks are low, generally not exceeding 
fifteen or twenty feet in height. On the south side of the old channel will 
be found quite an extensive sandy flood plain, extending from the border 
of the Maumee moraine southwestward, covering almost the entire sur- 
face of Starke County, the northern part of Pulaski, Jasper and Newton 
counties. On the north the main channel largely borders the Michigan 
moraine. ; 
The great width of the stream from South Bend to the eastern part 
of Illinois was owing to three causes—first, the surface of the country 
through which this part of the stream flowed was destitute of rugged 
features, being a comparatively level, smooth surface; second, the stream 
crossed the arched condition of the bed rock which extends in a north- 
westerly course across Indiana into Illinois; this rocky ridge probably pro- 
duced well-marked rapids, similar to those of the Ohio River near Louis- 
ville, and also had a marked tendency to dam the waters and cause them 
to overflow a wide territory above, giving to this region the general ap- 
pearances of a great lake having occupied its territory; third, at South 
Bend, a tributary one-third its size was added to its volume; also the 
overflow from the Michigan basin through the Grapevine Valley. 
The principal tributaries of the great Kankakee were the Elkhart 
and Yellow rivers, draining from the Maumee glacier, and probably the 
Tippecanoe River at a point where it enters the southeast corner of Starke 
County; this I have not carefully investigated, but which I think will 
probably be found to be a fact, also what I am pleased to call the great 
Dowagiac River, now represented by the Dowagiac Creek, which heads 
south of Kalamazoo, Mich., but the waters of whose ancient stream prob- 
ably accumulated far north of that point, gathering all the glacial waters 
from the eastern slope of the eastern lateral moraine of the Michigan 
