all through that almost immeasurable period known as the mesozoic 

 and cenozoic time, until the age of ice, there is little doubt that its 

 surface had been undergoing important and extensive changes. 

 Owing to the constant oscillations of this continent, which is more 

 restless and inconstant than the sea, the drainage of the basin of the 

 Great Lakes (always an extensive region of waters) has been trans- 

 ferred in regular process from the west to the east. First from the 

 Mississippi gradually to the Hudson, and then to the St. Lawrence. 

 All the northern states, by this rising and sinking of the land, have 

 been scored and furrowed with new and extensive lines of drainage. 

 Facts, brought to light by the coast survey and the recent investiga- 

 tions of geologists, it is believed, prove that a pre-glacial river, before 

 Lake Erie was formed, extended from the south end of Lake Huron, 

 occupying a channel now buried, which extends through Upper 

 Canada to Lake Erie, curving around Long Point and following 

 the valley of Grand river in a buried channel northerly across the 

 province of Upper Canada, to the west end of Lake Ontario. Among 

 other tributaries from the south it received the waters of the ancient 

 river of Cassadaga. The channel of this old river and its tributary, 

 in their course through the lake is determined by the soundings made 

 by the coast survey. During the lapse of vast eras of time, but 

 before the ice epoch, this old river channel became closed by the 

 action of glaciers, which also excavated the lake basin, and dammed 

 its waters. While such great changes and events were occurring so 

 near to the limits of Chautauqua Lake, it is impossible that the 

 surrounding highlands must not have also experienced grand physical 

 changes. In Chautauqua County, through the great furrows between 

 the hills, which now form its principal valleys, extending 

 southerly from the northern face of the ridge, may have been the 

 outlet of the Great Lakes, or of some great inland sea, of which 

 continental changes of level and other causes may have slowly 

 lessened its southward flow and finally turned its current northward ; 

 or they may have been the channels of some mighty river that 

 emptied its waters into the peleozoic ocean. The great depth and 

 width of these valleys, the hardness of the rocks that lie on either 

 side of them, in level lying strata, sundered where they border the 

 valleys, shows that the intervening space was once filled with solid 

 strata of rocks, forcing upon us the conviction that they could have 

 only been carved out by the exercise of some mighty force, as of 

 water and ice, roughly scoring in the rocky surface of the country 

 the outlines of these great valleys, leaving them to be deepened and 

 finished by the glaciers and later processes, these first forces graving 

 upon the country only the general features of the landscape. 



Imperfect as is the history of this region, after it emerged from 

 the great paleozoic ocean that once covered it, until the glacial 



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