UPPER OHIO DRAINAGE SYSTEM. 91 



attempted. The writer can at best present only an imperfect and tentative 

 interpretation. The features may perhaps be best discussed by beginning 

 at New Mai-tinsville, where the divide was first located, and passing from 

 there up the Ohio to the mouth of the Beaver. 



Although the trend of the ti-ibutaries and the high altitude of bordering 

 uplands near New Martinsville suggest that the divide at one time stood 

 near the site of that village, it evidently had become shifted to the north 

 when the best-defined system of gradation plains of that region was formed. 

 Fishing Creek, which enters from the southeast at New Martinsville, and 

 Fish Creek, which enters from the east 14 miles farther up the Ohio, have 

 a well-defined gradation plain which is in harmony with that on the portion 

 of the Ohio below New Martinsville, and which is too low to permit of 

 northward discharge. On Fish Creek at Littleton, W. Va., about 30 miles 

 from the Ohio, the gradation plain stands only 930 feet above tide, while 

 at the mouth it is not far from 825 feet. On Fishing Creek observations 

 were made only near its mouth; the gradation plain there is about 800 feet 

 above tide, and this plain is found to continue down the Ohio with gradual 

 descent. 



The first place above New Mai-tinsville where features occur that 

 suggest a change or disturbance of drainage is at the series of sharp 

 curves in the Ohio Valley below Moundsville, W. Va., 8 to 12 miles 

 above the mouth of Fish Creek, where the stream describes .a letter S in 

 its curves. But these curves do not seem to be accompanied by any 

 features that make evident the crossing of an old divide. The height of 

 the bluffs does not appear to differ from that of neighboring parts of the 

 valley above and below; the width of the valley is also as great as the 

 average width in that region. Furthermore, just above Moundsville, on 

 the east side of the Ohio, a rock shelf capped with gravel appears at an 

 altitude about 250 feet above the river, or 850 to 860 feet above tide, which 

 seems to fit in well with the gradation plains farther down the valley. 

 There is, however, one feature which seems to suggest a divide below 

 Moundsville. There is a remarkably high gradation plain on Grave 

 Creek, a tributary which enters at Moundsville from the southeast. Its 

 altitude at Easton, only 8 miles from the Ohio, is 1,017 feet above tide, as 

 estimated from the railway station, and it is capped by a deposit of gravel 

 several feet in depth. Four miles below and almost in sight of the Ohio 



