52 ICHTHYOLOGIA OHIENSIS 



(the river being often one mile wide) which was for- 

 merly a second lake, extending about one hundred 

 miles to Cave-hill narrows, with a variable breadth 

 of four to twenty miles ; only a few bluffs appearing 

 occasionally on the banks, and the boundary hills 

 being only one hundred and fifty feet high on an 

 average. AtCave-hill or Cave in the rock, the river, 

 from a mile broad, becomes at once very narrow, 

 and the hills come very near the banks on both sides, 

 forming a short narrows, below which stands another 

 plain, which was once a third Lake, about twelve 

 miles long and six miles wide : it ends at Grand 

 Pierre creek, and the broad narrows between the 

 north and south bluffs. Here begins' the lowest 

 part of the Ohio Valley, which grows wide gradually 

 [I. 312] [12] and extends as far as the Mississippi, 

 being from six to twenty miles wide and bounded by 

 hills one hundred feet high on an average, and with 

 very few stones. 



Basin. The basin of a river, must not be mis- 

 taken for its valley, since it includes the whole 

 regions watered by the streams flowing into it. The 

 basin of Ohio is very extensive, including the greater 

 share of the states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, 

 and Indiana, with parts of Pennsylvania, New- York, 

 Virginia, Alabama and Illinois, and a small corner 

 of North Carolina, Georgia and Mississippi, watering 

 therefore twelve states of the Union. It occupies 

 eight degrees of latitude from the thirty-fourth to the 

 forty-second degrees, and about twenty-six degrees 

 of longitude. Its whole surface includes at least 

 half a million of square miles, and three hundred 

 and twenty millions of square acres. 



Islands. The Ohio has a great many, about one 



