These facts seem to indicate that if the debris of this valley 

 should be removed from its sides and bottom, and the hard rock 

 that forms its floor should be exposed we would discover a deep 

 canon, extending from Warren northward, in almost a direct line 

 to Lake Erie at Dunkirk; thence northerly to the buried channel of 

 the ancient river of Lake Erie. Its rocky bottom would be seen to 

 have a very regular slope or descent to the north, as if it were once 

 worn by water running in that direction into Lake Erie; walled by 

 precipitous rocky sides, forming a chasm in some places nearly one 

 thousand feet deep. The deep gorge of the Canadaway, which 

 seems now to have its upper or south termination at the villages of 

 Laona and Shumla, actually extends far beneath and south of the 

 waters of Cassadaga lake. The lake itself lies in a little cavity sunk 

 in the surface of an immense deposit of northern drift which now 

 fills this ancient gorge. It further appears, from like data, the depth 

 of oil wells sunk along the Allegheny, in Cattaraugus and McKean 

 counties, the form of hills and the direction of the valleys, that the 

 waters of the upper Allegheny and its tributaries, instead of flowing 

 by way of Kinzua and Warren, southward, as they do now, were 

 formerly deflected westward at Steamburg, Cattaraugus County, and 

 were finally discharged into this ancient river of the Cassadaga at or 

 near Falconer, and thence into Lake Erie. 



Like the other waters of the Chautauqua basin, there is also 

 the strongest reason to believe that the waters of at least the lower 

 segment of Lake Chautauqua were once discharged through a 

 channel worn and polished by the operation of mighty forces in ages 

 past, which extends underneath the drift from the foot of the lake 

 north of the city of Jamestown to Falconer, where it discharged its 

 waters into this northward flowing river, and thence into Lake 

 Erie and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, instead of the Mississippi and 

 Gulf of Mexico, as it now does, and that the waters of the northern 

 section of the lake were discharged northward into Lake Erie near 

 Barcelona. 



These old channels are not the result of chance, but are the 

 product of mighty dynamic forces operating continuously through 

 long periods of time, in faithful obedience to the general but simple 

 laws that govern the universe. Since their waters have ceased to flow, 

 oceans have waxed and waned, mountains and islands have arisen 

 from the sea, and continents have grown old. For a history of 

 these channels we must turn to the faithful records that the rocks 

 have kept. The story that man has preserved of his deeds and his 

 race, is, at best, a collection of feeble tales, dim legends, the preju- 

 diced or partial stories of imperfect historians, while the 

 biography of the earth is carved in monuments of stone. The rocks 

 and fossils are letters in which it is written. Indeed, the facts them- 



41 



