The beautiful bay of Dewittville was deeper and wider than now. 

 The lake spread much beyond its present limits below Chautauqua 

 and in this grove its water extended high up the hillside. Bemus 

 and Long Points were submerged ; above and far below them the 

 lake expanded wide over either shore and a spacious bay extended 

 a long way up the valley of Goose Creek. The waters were broad 

 and deep over the swampy ground that borders either side of the 

 outlet. The lake's highest altitude is marked upon the hills of 

 gravel and sand at Jamestown, through which the outlet has worn 

 its way. Its former elevation is plainly measured where its waters 

 have slowly, very slowly, cut a passage through the rocks at Dex- 

 terville. The process by which it has been drained is as slow as 

 that by which it was formed. Indeed, its drainage is still going 

 on, but so slowly that the change in its level that has occurred 

 during the whole period of written human history, scarce deserves 

 a record. We may trace along this hillside and among the winding 

 avenues of this shady grove, as we would read in the slowly sinking 

 sands of the hour-glass, the marks of its subsiding waters. Faint 

 traces of the lake are marked upon the shelving banks nearly as high 

 as the amphitheater. Later traces are more plainly visible in the 

 regular and natural terraces that rise near the lake, and that now 

 partially form the graded avenues that curve parallel to its shores. 

 Unmistakable evidence of the action of water and their more recent 

 presence exist in the character and arrangement of the material 

 that forms the little cape called Chautauqua, that extends from 

 the auditorium outward into the lake. It is now elevated scarce 

 ten feet above it, yet when Caesar crossed the Rubicon this little 

 point of land was above its waters and bore its maple shade as 

 gracefully as now. 



The earth is more than a million of times smaller than the 

 sun. Yet the sun is an insignificant star among the myriad of stars 

 that adorn the heavens. Light moves eleven millions of miles in 

 one minute of time. Notwithstanding this prodigious velocity it 

 would take three thousand years to reach us from some of the fixed 

 stars, and it would never reach us from the extreme limits of the 

 universe. Wlonderful as are these disclosures of magnitudes and 

 distances made by astronomy, full as amazing have been the rev- 

 elations that geology has made of the passage of time. Twenty 

 miles of stratified rocks envelop the earth. What an immense 

 length of time this fact implies. Man is utterly powerless to grasp 

 the prodigious circumstances. He can no more determine with 

 his finite measure the illimitable past than he can fathom the im- 

 measurable future. 



Long as was the epoch of icebergs and glaciers, during which 

 our lake was born, and long as was the period of time that fol- 



53 



