122 C. Atwater, Esq. on the 
river, have been drained off, and the dry land appears whers 
once stood the waters of lakes Erie and Michigan, then form- 
ing but one great lake. I am fully impressed with the belief, 
that were the bottom of Niagara river as high as it once was, 
the upper lakes would now, as formerly, empty themselves 
into the Ohio by the Scioto and Miami rivers, and into the 
Mississippi by the Illinois. I might proceed to examine every 
part of the country where prairies and barrens are found ; but 
they have all been formed by the same agent, and that is water. 
An objection to this opinion may be raised by some, that these 
prairies and barrens are frequently found in the counties of 
Delaware, Champaign, Madison, Fayette, &c. on ground con- 
siderably elevated. Are they higher than the hills near Chil- 
licothe? From a careful inspection, but without any instr: 
ments, I am convinced that they are none of them as high. 
There is no perpendicular fall of water, but merely a gra 
dual descent, from Columbus to the Ohio; nay, there is 0 
fall from the very source ofthe Scioto toits mouth. Every oné 
acquainted with hydrostatics, knows, that water will run brisk- 
ly where the descent is only a few inches in a mile. The 
writer believes that the Scioto, from its source to the Ohio 
river, does not descend more than one hundred feet, and that 
the present surface of Lake Erie is about on a level with the 
Ohio in a freshet: that before the channel of Niagara rivet 
was deepened, as it evidently has been, by the attrition of that 
mighty stream ; and before the hills adjacent to the Ohio wet 
worn down by the waters of the Scioto, the whole country 
north of Chillicethe, where these hills commence, to 
Erie, inclusive, was covered with water, except the vey 
highest hills in the counties of Greene, &c. which were then 
islands. What tends to corroborate this opinion is, that 
these high grounds we find limestone and other rocks, and 
indications of gypsum ; but no alluvion, and none of those frag 
ments and ruins which are produced by water acting mecha 
nically upon a country fora long space of time. We might 
mention other parts of country where prairies and barrens 
abound, and which have been formed by water. Those along 
Greene river, in Kentucky, have evidently been covered by 
