1881.] dii [Spencer. 



river has an altitude of 495 feet above Lake Ontario, while at Brantford it 

 is 410 feet (this elevation may not be perfectly accurate) above the same 

 datum. From Brantford the river winds through a broad valley, with a 

 general easterly direction, to Seneca, where the immediate bed is about 

 quarter of a mile wide, flowing at the southern side of a valley, more than 

 two miles wide, and 75 feet below its boundaries, which are 440 feet above 

 Lake Ontario (sec profile on subsequent page). At Seneca the bed of the 

 present river-course is 365 feet above Lake Ontario, or only 37 feet above 

 Lake Erie. (The H. & N. W. Railway levels give Lake Erie as 328 feet 

 above Lake Ontario, whilst the Report of the Chief Engineer of the Wel- 

 land Canal states that the difference of level is 326^ feet. As these two 

 levels agree so nearly, and as the other figures refer to the railway levels, 

 I have followed them here.) Eastward from Seneca the river continues to 

 have its broad valley as far as Cayuga. To near this town the waters of 

 the Welland canal feeder reach, at a height of about 9 (?) feet above Lake 

 Erie. 



From Seneca to Ca3'uga the direction of the valley is nearly south, but 

 at the latter place it abruptly turns nearly to the eastward, and in a short 

 distance it passes to a flatter country and flows over Coniferous limestone. 

 After a sluggish flow, it enters Lake Erie (passing through a marshy 

 country) at Port Maitland, more than fifteen miles in a direct line from 

 Cayuga. It must be remembered that, from Seneca to Cayuga, the valley 

 is broad and conspicuous. At only a short distance south of the river, at 

 Seneca, the summit of the country is occupied by a gravel ridge.* 



Returning to the valley of Fairchild's creek, we find the stream princi- 

 pally flowing in the former bed of the Grand river, abandoned a few miles 

 below Gait since the Ice Age. This creek crosses the Great Western Rail- 

 way at a level of fifteen feet below the crossing of the Grand river, at a 

 few miles to the westward. Again, the Fairchild's creek crosses the 

 Brantford and Harrisburg railway at an altitude of 407 feet above Lake 

 Ontario, or a little below that of the Grand river at Brantford, although it 

 empties into it a few miles east of the city just named. 



Fairchild's creek is now of moderate size meandering through the drift 

 for a width of two miles. This drift is in part stratified clay. The Grand 



* The General Manager and Chief Engineer of the air line of the G. W. Rail- 

 way have recently kindly furnished me with a profile of the railway crossing 

 over the Grand river. A similar favor has been kindly conceded by the Chief 

 Engineer of the Canada Southern Raihvay. From both of these lines of levels 

 (about a mile apart) we find that the hard rock appears in the drift at a few feet 

 below the bed of the river, but at a level below that of the surface of Lake Erie. 

 The stream, at these places, occupies the eastern portion of tbe valley about 

 two miles from the northern or north-western boundary of the valley, marked 

 by the contour line of 4-10 feet above Lake Ontario, noticed south of Seneca, but 

 which also occurs westward of Cayuga, near the general bend in course of the 

 river. On both of tliese profiles, at about half a mile to the westward of the 

 present site of the river, a depression in the drift occurs to a depth but little 

 inferior to that of the present river-bed. This appears to mark the place where 

 the ancient channel leaves what is now the modern direction of the river for a 

 nearly direct line to the Erie basin. 



