Spencer.] OKJo [March 18, 



Dundas valley begins at the "bluff" east of the Hamilton reservoir, and 

 extends westward, including the location of the city of Hamilton and the 

 Burlington bay, at least its western portion. With this definition, the 

 width at the Burlington heights (an old lake terrace 108 feet above present 

 level of the water) would be less than five miles. At a mile and half 

 westward of the heights, the valley suddenly becomes narrowed (equally 

 on both sides of its axis of direction, by the Niagara escarpment making 

 two equal concave bends, on each side of the valley, whence the straight 

 upper portion extends, the whole resembling the outline of a thistle and 

 its stem), from which place it extends six miles westward to Copetown, on 

 the northern side ; and three and a half to Ancaster, on its southern side. 

 The breadth between the limestone walls of this valley varies somewhat 

 from two to two and a half miles. The summit angles of the limestone 

 walls on both sides are decidedly sharp. 



Dundas town is situated in this valley, its centre having a height of about 

 70 feet above Lake Ontario, but its sides rise in terraces or abrupt hills ; 

 and on ascending the valley, we find that between the escarpments are 

 great ranges of parallel hills separated by deep gorges or glens, excavated 

 in the drift by modern streams. This rugged character continues until the 

 summit of the Post Pliocene ridges have a height equal to that of the es- 

 carpment. As the gorges ascend towards the westward, they become 

 smaller, until at some distance south-west of Copetown and Ancaster, the 

 divide of the present system of drainage is reached. Some of these streams 

 have cut through the drift, so that they have only an altitude above the 

 lake (which is seven miles distant) of 240 feet, while the tops of the ridges im- 

 mediately in the neighborhood are not much less than 400 feet high, though 

 they themselves have been removed to a depth of about another hundred 

 feet, for the drift has filled the upper portion of the valley to the height of 

 500 feet above Lake Ontario. Even to the very sources of the streams, the 

 country resembles the rivers of our great North Western Territories (or 

 those of the Western States), cutting their way through a deep drift at high 

 altitudes, which is not underlaid by harder rocks, showing deep valleys 

 rapidly increasing in size and depth, as they are cleaning out the soft 

 material, and hurrying down to lower levels — a strong contrast to the fea- 

 tures in most other portions of our Province. 



On the south side of the Dundas valley, a few unimportant streams, mostly 

 dry in summer, have worn back the limestone escarpment, over which they 

 flow, to distances varying from a few yards to a few hundred, making glens 

 at whose head in spring time some picturesque cascades can be seen. At 

 Mount Albion, six miles east of Hamilton, there are two of these larger gorges, 

 whose waters, after passing over picturesque fills, 70 feet high, and through 

 glens several hundred yards in length, empty into the triangular valley 

 noticed before. On the north side of the Dundas valley, besides small 

 gorges with their streams comparable to those on the south side, there are 

 several of much larger dimensions ; for example, that at Waterdown, six 

 miles north of Hamilton. Still larger is Glen Spencer which has a canon half 



