NE-SAW-JE-WON 



passing into the second stage, the ice in the Ontario basin had 

 melted so far to the northeast that the long narrow body of 

 water between the ice and the Niagaran escarpment increased 

 to a lake overflowing the basin. This body of water has been 

 named Lake Iroquois and is the ancestor of Lake Ontario. Re- 

 treating from the vicinity of Syracuse, the ice uncovered a still 

 lower outlet near Rome, New York, through which the waters 

 of Lake Iroquois spilled down the Mohawk valley to the Hud- 

 son and deepened the channel which centuries later was to 

 serve as a part of the Erie Canal. Lake Iroquois was fed not 

 only by the waters of the melting Ontario ice lobe but also by 

 the overflow from the vast second Lake Algonquin, which dis- 

 charged through a lower outlet than the Port Huron-Lake 

 Erie-Niagara River route. All the waters of the upper lake 

 basins — Superior, Michigan, Huron, Saginaw and Georgian 

 Bay — were connected in a broad expanse of lake. Its shores 

 extended well beyond the borders of the present waters oc- 

 cupying those basins, and it covered the eastern part of the 

 Northern Peninsula of Michigan, except for a few small 

 islands. The entire overflow passed eastward through the low 

 col in the vicinity of Kirkfield, Ontario, down Trent River 

 to the Ontario-Lake Iroquois basin — a channel known as the 

 Kirkfield-Trent River outlet. Thus, when Lake Algonquin 

 fell to the level of the Kirkfield outlet its waters reached the 

 Atlantic Ocean at New York through Lake Iroquois, Mohawk 

 River and the Hudson valley. The Hudson valley was then a 

 marine estuary, drowned when it was flooded by the rising 

 Atlantic Ocean. Lake Erie was a small independent lake in the 

 eastern part of the Erie basin, no longer fed by the waters of 

 melting ice, and was somewhat below the level of the lake 

 today. It had as tributary a stream which flowed from the 

 swampy region which is now Lake St. Clair, through the 

 channel (perhaps a swampy slough) of Detroit River, and 

 across the western floor of the old lake. During this period 

 Niagara River, receiving only the overflow from this small 



