Environs of Kingston, Ont. 115 
ancient island on which Kingston is situated. The present 
broad beds of Little Cataraqui and Great Cataraqui Creeks 
were gradually chiselled out, first by glaciers and then by 
the waters of what would then be two deep inlets from the 
lake and a river divided by the island, and thus the lime- 
stone escarpment which in large part forms the island’s 
front was created. The sand deposits in the direction of 
Glenburnie, again at Cataraqui, and again in the estuary 
west of the Lunatic Asylum, would seem to indicate that 
the Little Cataraqui Creek valley was the channel down 
which the great body of the water from the Laurentian 
heights immediately beyond here came. The different beds 
of sand in the estuary also appear to mark three successive 
stages and conditions of deposit—the iowest, a coarse sand 
laid down in deeper water, the middle a strongly wave- 
marked bed, indicative of rapidly flowing waters, and the 
highest a deposit of fine silt-like sand, which has settled 
during comparatively still waters. 
THE OUTLET OF LAKE ONTARIO. 
Perhaps the most interesting questions are connected 
with the outlet of the-waters of Lake Ontario into the St. 
Lawrence here. Have these waters since Ontario expanded 
from a river into a lake always flowed downwards to the 
ocean over the Laurentian ridge at the Thousand Islands ? 
Presently there is a depression here between the Adiron- 
dacks of New York State and our Canadian Laurentian 
ridges sufficient to admit of this downward flow, but, 
between Kingston and Cape Vincent, it is a comparatively 
shallow depression. The lake is undoubtedly pre-glacial, 
but the somewhat higher elevation of the Laurentian area 
at the close of the Pliocene to admit of the descent of the 
glaciers, would make it probable that at this time, as well 
as during the melting and recession northward of the ice 
area, the outflow was by way of Lake Oneida and the 
Mohawk Valley. Even at the Park towards the centre of 
the Thousand Islands, the grooves in the sandstones lie 
S. 40° W., showing that there must have been some eleva- 
