CLINTON AND FAYETTE COUNTIES. 431 



Anderson's Fork rises on the line of water-shed to the south of Reese- 

 ville, and flows in a circling channel, bending from north to west, and 

 emptying into Caesar's Greek, at a point without the county. No where 

 in its course is this stream far above bedded stone, and at some points it 

 runs upon strata of the Niagara formation, as at places in the " Prairie," 

 at Judge King's, and at Port William it cuts through a portion of the 

 pentamerus beds of this formation, where, besides the bed of the creek 

 being wholly of this stone, the banks, from five to ten feet high, are also 

 of the same. Above Port William the stream is sluggish, and traverses, 

 for some ten or twelve miles, a district of marked character, known as 

 the " Prairie," a tract of wonderful fertility, of deep, black loam, and which 

 has been, at no very distant past time, the location of a shallow lake or 

 swamp. The highest land, I suppose, in the county is north-east of this 

 "Prairie," and is, perhaps, not far from seven hundred feet above low- 

 water mark at Cincinnati. I was not able to obtain the elevations of 

 the Cincinnati and Muskingum Valley Railroad, which traverses both 

 the counties of Clinton and Fayette, and therefore lack some data neces- 

 sary to state with exactness the elevations of the different parts of these 

 counties. But by the kindness of Mr. J. H. Klippart, of Columbus, I 

 obtained those of the Marietta and Cincinnati Railroad, and shall have 

 to refer the elevations of the portions of these counties to those of this 

 road. The highest point in Clinton county on the Cincinnati and Mari- 

 etta Railroad is a point a little east of Vienna, which is 737^ feet above 

 low-water mark at Cincinnati. Anderson's Fork receives but few tribu- 

 taries in all its course, the tract which it drains being comparatively 

 long and narrow. The bedded stone in its channel is of the Niagara 

 formation as far down as the Lumberton quarries, where it strikes and 

 cuts nearly through the formation known to geologists as Clinton, and at 

 a point a few miles further down stream, at Ingall's Dam, just outside of 

 Clinton county, it cuts about four feet of purple-red shale underlying the 

 Clinton, and strikes the higher strata of the Cincinnati group, or Blue 

 Limestone. 



Todd's Fork, with its tributaries, drains the central and western part 

 of the county. Running in a course in general parallel with the last 

 named stream, and within three or four miles of it during the most of 

 its course, it could receive few and unimportant tributaries on the side 

 next to that creek, of which Dutch Creek is the only one wor- hy of being 

 named. On the other side there are three, which I shall mention. The 

 smallest of these is Lytle's Creek, draining the immediate vicinity of 

 Wilmington, and along which the Cincinnati and Muskingum Valley 

 Railroad runs. Cowan's Creek rises on the north of the " Snow Hill " 



