taken through the ice, the lake is thirty-five feet deep and gradually 

 decreases towards its head. A short distance below these points 

 soundings show a depth of fifty, increasing to ninety feet above Long 

 Point where are the deepest parts of the lake. Between Long and 

 Bemus Points the depth is, in places, as great as sixty feet. Below 

 Bemus Point the lake is twenty-five feet deep, decreasing the whole 

 length of the lower lake to its outlet, where it is but six feet in 

 depth. These imperfect moraines now divide Chautauqua into four 

 imperfect lakes connected by straits or channels. A fifth lake existed 

 during the ice period, filling the cavity between the drift hills now 

 occupied by that part of Jamestown known as Brooklyn, and the 

 easterly part of the main village. The waters of this lake were 

 dammed, not only by drift and rock at Dexterville, one mile below 

 Jamestown, but by ice also, and were connected with the other lakes 

 by a narrow strait. 



The topography of the surface at Dexterville, where the waters 

 were dammed, affords matter for curious inquiry. Where the waters 

 of the outlet have cut their way through the solid rock, just above 

 the railroad bridge, the tops of the rocks, that wall either side of 

 the stream, are many feet higher than the surface of the ground not 

 many rods to the west. Indeed, a deep depression there connects 

 this valley of Brooklyn with the wide valley below the Dexterville 

 mills, which the railroad company has utilized by making cuttings 

 there. No one can fail to remark the regular and even descent that 

 the surface maintains from the highest point of the hill beyond and 

 east of the gorge through which the outlet flows until it reaches 

 the railroad cutting on the west side. Why should the waters of 

 the outlet seek a passage at this elevated point through so difficult 

 and rock-breasted a route, when to the west a few rods, a low de- 

 pression invited an easy way for them, unobstructed except by loose 

 earth and stones. The explanation of this phenomenon may be that 

 the ice so filled the depression where the railroad cutting now is, as 

 to compel the water to seek a passage at the higher point, now occu- 

 pied by their present channel. Held there for ages by this dam of 

 ice, by slow yet constant work, they may have lowered the channel 

 to its present level. A study of the region of drift discloses many 

 instances of the kind. Even now permanent lakes exist in the frozen 

 regions of the north, that were made ages before the era of man, 

 and have been held until the present time by shores exclusively 

 formed of ice and snow precisely as they w r ere formed at first. 



How long before the era of ice the deep and wide gorges that 

 extend from the northern face of the ridge southerly through Chau- 

 tauqua County, now partially filled with drift, had been worn into 

 the foundation rocks, we have no reliable data. Since the area occu- 

 pied by Chautauqua County emerged from the paleozoic ocean, and 



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