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glacial lobe, forming a mighty glacial river, flowing south to a point three 
miles north of Niles, Mich., where it received a large tributary which had 
opened a way through the lateral Michigan moraine, and was discharg- 
ing its waters from the Michigan basin, which had not yet found an 
opening to the south, between the Michigan ice lobe and its moraine. The 
Dowagiac River, after receiving the overflow waters from the Michigan 
basin, continued south and emptied its waters into the Kankakee at the 
present site of the city of South Bend. 
The old channel where it emptied into the Kankakee is three miles 
wide, with well-defined banks rising from fifty to seventy-five feet above 
the bed of the valley, the valley having been cut to bed rock and silted 
up about 120 feet, leaving the above-mentioned banks yet remaining: 
These great streams existed for long periods of time. The Kankakee 
and the Dowagiac conveying the glacial waters during the advance of the 
ice sheet, also during the period that it stood at its most advanced point, 
and during its withdrawal, until the Michigan ice lobe had sufficiently 
receded to allow the waters along its eastern border to escape through 
the Desplaines opening. This promoted a rapid lowering of the waters 
between the ice lobe and its terminal lateral moraine, and terminated the 
flow of waters from the Michigan basin into the Dowagiac River, leaving 
a broad water-worn plain leading from the Dowagiae River back north- 
westward to the Michigan basin. 
Here commenced a system of river robbing. The Dowagiac River 
doubled upon itself at an angle of 45 degrees, followed the abandoned 
channel of its former tributary and discharged its waters into Lake Michi- 
gan, leaving in turn a well-worn channel from three to four miles wide 
and thirteen miles long, leading to the great Trunk Stream or Kankakee. 
The distance from the point where the Dowagiac emptied its waters into 
the Kankakee to St. Joseph, Mich., is thirty-eight miles, with a fall of 
141 feet; from the same point to Momence, Ill, the distance is 92 miles. 
with a fall of 98 feet. It can be readily understood that, with the first 
annual flood, a part of the waters of the Kankakee would follow the aban- 
doned Dowagiac channel, mingling with the Dowagiac, and onward into 
Lake Michigan at St. Joseph. The fall over the new route being three 
and a half times greater than that over the old route, the new channel 
rapidly cut through the old river deposit, finally claiming all of the waters 
of the once mighty Kankakee, leaving its valley from South Bend to the 
Desplaines a geological monument to tell of its eternal past. 
