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The Kankakee River, from its source to its mouth, took a south- 
westerly course. When the waters left the old channel they took an 
almost due northerly course, forming a great bend in the river, with its 
sharp convexity to the south, which gave our city its name—South Bend. 
The two rivers since changing their course have eroded their valleys 
from fifty to seventy-five feet into the old river deposits, and have not 
yet attained their base level. The Kankakee Valley at South Bend, where 
it escapes from between the Maumee and the Michigan moraines, is 
narrowed down to three miles, with high rugged banks and no flood plain. 
Five miles east, and up the valley from South Bend, it attains a width of 
six miles, which width it holds with slight variation until it reaches the 
rim of the Saginaw basin. This end of the valley is thoroughly drained 
by the channel of the present St. Joseph River, which has eroded through 
the old river drift to the extent of from forty to fifty feet. There are a 
few peat bogs and marshes lying back from the river, where the valley is 
broad, and the modern channel well to one side. Otherwise the old valley 
above South Bend is one vast level sand plain. Below South Bend, where 
the old valley remains silted up, and there is no modern channel for drain- 
age purposes, the spring waters escaping from beneath the Michigan 
moraine, and from the foot of the Maumee, also bubbling up from the bed 
of the old stream itself, as I am informed py Mr. William Whitten, in 
charge of rock excavations at Momence, has been productive of a vast 
growth of peat or muck over the entire valley proper, from South Bend 
to Momence. Beneath this peat bed, which ranges from six to ten feet 
in depth, is found fine sand and river gravel, as shown by excavations 
made in the construction of a large ditch made with the view of straight- 
ening the river. This ditch commences at South Bend, is twenty feet 
wide, ten feet deep, and twenty miles long, which gives us a comprehen- 
sive idea of the materials underlying the bog. If the stream had not 
changed its course at South Bend and continued down its original valley, 
eroding a channel or partially cleaning the old silted valley to a depth of 
from fifty to sixty feet, as the waters have done through their new 
course, rendering to the Kankakee Valley thereby proper drainage, there 
would never have been known a “Kankakee Marsh,” but all that portion 
of Indiana would have been a vast sandy plain, covered with oak or bar- 
rens timber, and in general appearances the same as that part of the 
yalley above South Bend, 
