FATETTE COUNTY. 439 



solid earth, the currents of water carried away some of the material con- 

 stituting the drift sediment of the former period. The channels of 

 drainage mark the direction of the current. Within these channels the 

 drift deposits were removed sometimes to the bedded rock. The varying 

 force of the currents distributed the material as we now see it. Strong 

 currents carried all before them; weaker currents only the more refined 

 sediment. Any current bearing substances along will deposit the 

 heavier material first when the current becomes checked. It is thus 

 that matters carried in currents of water become assorted and distributed. 

 When a current bearing sediment finds a wider channel and expands, 

 the current is checked at the side upon which it finds room to spread out. 

 Here will be a deposit of the heavier part of its freight. If two cur- 

 rents meet at the point of intersection, the currents will be retarded, es- 

 pecially if one be more swollen than the other, and the heavier material 

 carried will be deposited. Where now are mere brooks, the ample ex- 

 tent of the washing, the broad valleys, show that rivers once flowed. 

 Wherever the drift clays were not washed, the gravel lies interspersed 

 through it ; but where the clays are broken, where valleys have been cut 

 in them, on the sides of these cuts, on the escarpment of the broken clay 

 and gravel drift, the clay has been removed and the gravel is left 

 in beds. Following the principles before referred to in regard to the 

 laws of sedimentary deposits, the road-maker of to day may find the de- 

 posits of gravel he needs. Along the declivity, where two former cur- 

 rents met, far back from the meeting point of the diminutive stream of 

 the present time, on a point and looking from the higher land, he who 

 seeks this useful material need not look in vain. As there were various 

 levels of the water at that far distant period, so are there several eleva- 

 tions at which gravel is actually found. In addition to those beds on the 

 escarpment of the hills, there are found hillocks or natural mounds of 

 gravel which represent eddies, or places in which for some cause the 

 water was more quiet, and hence, unable to carry forward all its load of 

 sediment. Besides these, the soil of the present bottoms is in many 

 places underlaid with ample deposits of gravel. 



Drifted wood is found in the blue clay in all our district. The instances 

 in which wood has been found in the clay beds, penetrated in well-dig- 

 ging, are by no means few, nearly every neighborhood furnishing one or 

 more. A kind of jointed grass or rush was obtained from a well near 

 Reeseville, in Clinton county. 



Bones. — The gravel, which lay so long hidden from the knowledge of 

 the present inhabitants, was almost uniformly made use of as places 

 of interment by some former race of people. Scarcely a gravel bed ha 



