BURLINGTON HEIGHTS TO TORONTO 353 



surface sloping gently toward lake Ontario, with a low shore cliff of clay 

 or more rarely of shale to the northwest. The shore is nearly straight 

 and runs parallel to the present Ontario shore, but about 2 miles inland. 



At Credit river the regular trend of the beach is broken by a deep bay 

 with a bar of gravel cemented to conglomerate at its mouth, and from 

 here to the Humber river, just west of Toronto, there are low shores and 

 gravel bars. Dundas street, the main road of the region, follows the 

 gravel bars, or the low shore cliff, or the terrace at its foot, and the Cana- 

 dian Pacific railway makes use of it for several miles also. 



East of the Humber, at Toronto junction, another gravel bar, 176 feet 

 above Ontario, runs 2 miles westward, crowding the Humber out of its 

 old channel and forcing it to cut a new one through boulder clay and 

 Hudson River shale. It has already entrenched itself 30 or 40 feet in 

 the bed rock, while a small tributary, Black creek, is reexcavating the 

 old valley to the east, disclosing in places 100 or more feet of stratified 

 sand and clay. In the gravel itself many horns and bones of caribou 

 are found, and a number of years ago a Mr Thompson reported finding 

 a stone muller and arrow-head along with such remains, making it very 

 probable that the Indian dwelt on the shore of lake Iroquois much as 

 he did a hundred years ago on Toronto island. 



Toronto is mainly built on the sloping Iroquois terrace below a well 

 marked shore cliff of boulder clay. At Reservoir park a small gravel 

 deposit has provided many shells of Campeloma, Pleurocera, Sphserium, 

 and Unio, and a well sunk near the Don river half a mile to the south 

 disclosed similar shells 70 feet below the level of the beach. Except 

 unios reported from the Iroquois beach in New York many years ago, 

 these are the only known organic evidences that the water of those days 

 was fresh. At the well near the Don there was fairly satisfactory proof 

 that the boulder clay and other deposits of post-Glacial and inter-Glacial 

 age had been weathered and eroded before these shell beds were formed. 

 Where the Don valley crosses the Iroquois shore there is a gap of 

 about 2 miles, a wide bay extending to the north, and beyond the river, 

 at York or East Toronto, another gravel bar, still larger than that at 

 Toronto junction west of the city, extends westward from Scarboro 

 heights. The Don has evidently been elbowed westward in much the 

 same way as the Humber and has been forced to cut a new channel, 

 which in places is trenched 15 or 20 feet into the bedrock. The East 

 Toronto bar, which has disclosed a mammoth tooth and caribou horns, 

 stands from 186 to 196 feet above lake Ontario. 



Scarboro to Colborne 



Near the east end of the gravel bar cutting off the Don bay the shore 

 cliff of lake Iroquois is from 50 to 150 feet high, cut in a great spur reach- 



