232 THE GLACIAL LAKE AGASSIZ. 



sea; and Methy Lake, at the head of a series of lakes aud connectmg 

 streams tributary to the Churchill, is about 50 feet lower. According to 

 Dr. Robert Bell, "there is said to be a continuous watercourse" near this 

 portage, passing from the Clearwater, a branch of the Athabasca, into the 

 Churchill basin ;^ but its height forbids the inference that the waters of 

 Lake Agassiz ever outflowed there, for a subsidence of more than 700 feet 

 would be required to reduce Methy Lake and the divide in its vicinity to 

 the level of Lake Traverse. Instead, as was stated on page 64, it is my 

 belief that this channel was the outlet of a lake in the Athabasca basin, 

 dammed b}' the barrier of the receding ice-sheet on the north and thus 

 made tributary to Lake Agassiz. The other pass over the watershed, by 

 the way of Hatchet and Jackfish lakes, situated 300 to 375 miles north- 

 east of the Methy portage, is probably 1,300 or 1,400 feet above the sea, 

 and presents nearly equal difficulty to the hypothesis of an outlet from the 

 Winnipeg basin to the Mackenzie; but again there is much likelihood that 

 this course also served, at a later date, as an important avenue of inflow to 

 Lake Agassiz from the Athabasca glacial lake. 



Probable hypothesis of the discharge from the northeastward outlet being 

 tributary successively to the Mississippi and Hudso}i rivers. — When the dis- 

 charge by the River Wan-en ceased, the new outlet flowed northeastward. 

 Perhaps, as before stated, it turned back for some time to the south along 

 the border of the waning ice-sheet, and thus still passed into the Mississippi 

 by the way of Lakes Superior and Michigan. Stranger yet, thi-ough the 

 effect of subsidence, which greatly modified the conditions of drainage in 

 the Champlain epoch, as piiiuted out by Mr. Gilbert,^ this overflow, pre- 

 vented by the ice-bai'rier from going in the direction of the land slope to 

 Hudson Bay, may have been later carried into the Atlantic by the Mohawk 

 and Hudson rivers; or, at a still later stage, it may have taken its course 

 past the mouth of Lake Ontario to the sea near the head of the greatly 

 enlarged Gulf of St. Lawrence, which then filled the St. Lawrence Valley, 

 the basin of Lake Champlain, and the Ottawa Valley to Allumette Island 



' Bulletin, G. S. A., Vol. I, 1890, p. 291. 



'"The History of the Niagara Kiver," Sixth Annual Report of the Commissiouers of the State 

 Reservation at Niagara, for the year 1889, pp. 61-84, with maps (also in the Annual Report of the 

 Smithsonian Institution, 1890, pp. 231-257). 



