122 0. Jliwater, Esq. on the 



river have been drained off, and the dry land appears where 

 oiice stood the waters of lakes Erie and Michigan, then form- 

 ing but one great lake. I am fully impressed with the belief, 

 that were the bottom of Niagara river as high as it once was, 

 the upper lakes would now, as formerly, empty themselves 

 into the Ohio by the Scioto and Miami rivers, and into the 

 Mississippi by the Illinois. I might proceed to examine every 

 part of the country where prairies and barrens are found ; but 

 they have all been formed by the same agent, and that is water. 

 An objection to this opinion may be raised by some, that these 

 prairies and barrens are frequently found in the counties of 

 Delaware, Champaign, Madison, Fayette, &c. on ground con-- 

 siderably elevated. Are they higher than the hills near Chil- 

 licothe ? From a careful inspection, but without any instru- 

 ments, T am convinced that they are none of them as high. 



There is no perpendicular fall of water, but merely a gra- 

 dual descent, from Columbus to the Ohio ; nay, there is no 

 fall from the very source of the Scioto to its mouth. Every 

 one acquEiinted with hydrostatics, knows that water will run 

 briskly where the descent is only a few inches in a mile. The 

 writer believes that the Scioto, from its source to the Ohio 

 river, does not descend more than one hundred feet, and that 

 the present surface of Lake Erie is about on a level with the 

 Ohio in a freshet ; that before the channel of Niagara river 

 was deepened, as it evidently has been, by the attrition of that 

 tnighty stream ; and before the hills adjacent to the Ohio were 

 worn down by the waters of the Scioto, the whole country 

 porth of Chillicothe, where these hills commence, to Lake 

 Erie inclusive, was covered with water, except the very 

 highest hills in the counties of Greene, &c. which were then 

 islands. What tends to corroborate this opinion is, that on 

 these high grounds we find limestone and other rocks, and 

 indications of gypsum ; but no alluvion, and none of those frag- 

 ments and ruins which are produced by water acting mecha- 

 nically upon a country for a long space of time. We might 

 mention other parts of country where prairies and barrens 

 abound, and which have been formed by water. Those along 

 (jrreene river, in Kentucky, have evidently been covered by 



