lowed, during which our lake has been reduced to its present level, 

 it is in the world's history but as a day. Compared with the 

 millions of years that had elapsed previous thereto, and since the 

 end of azoic time, when life on earth began, it is but as yesterday. 

 The millions upon millions of years that passed before the dawn 

 of life, and since the world began its course — that immeasurable 

 period of time in which the world has circled around the sun, is 

 but an hour compared with the time that the stars have existed. 

 Who dare to estimate the ages upon ages of blazing splendor during 

 which the sun and all the stars have shone. Yet all that infinite 

 period of time is but a flash compared with the duration of the 

 universe, and the universe itself and all its glittering belt of stars 

 moving, as it seems to the limited comprehension of man, in regular 

 orbits, under fixed laws, compared with eternity, is but as a cloud 

 of dust, casually blown up from the wayside, to whirl and circle 

 for a moment in seeming order before some passing gust. 



Note — Many years prior to the delivery of this address, I was convinced 

 that what is called the Chautauqua Lake Basin, anciently discharged its 

 waters northward, and expressed that opinion in various lectures. I was later 

 confirmed in that opinion by Prof. Carll. Still later examinations by Prof. 

 Frank Leverett led him to believe that the waters of this north flowing river 

 were discharged still northward through a channel now nearly represented by 

 the Cattaraugus Creek. 



The hills that compose the Great Terminal Moraine where it crossed the 

 Conewango, near the state line between Pennsylvania and New York, indicate 

 a greater original elevation than do the earthy barriers at the head of Chau- 

 tauqua and Cassadaga Lakes, and which now prevent their waters from flow- 

 ing northward into Lake Erie. The waters of the ancient lake that once 

 spread so widely over the valleys of the Cassadaga and Conewango, were 

 probably anciently held in place at the southward by this Great Continental 

 Glacier, or dam of ice that for unnumbered centuries slowly retired northward 

 before the mild breath of the south wind, and until the channel of the Cone- 

 wango was worn lower than the level of these lakes. Lakes centuries old, 

 held by shores of ice, were a common occurrence in the Ice Age, and are a 

 phenomenon existing in the Polar Region even to this day. Obed Edson. 



54 



