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noticed that South Bend is located where three great ice lobes 

 met, the Maumee, Saginaw and Michigan, which permanently 

 marked their existence by massive accumulations, forming 

 rugged and permanent ranges of hills and highlands, that will 

 constitute the contour of our locality for many thousands of 

 years to come. 



This brings us to the ancient waterways of our county. 

 The melting of these vast fields of ice was conducive to great 

 floods and torrential streams. South Bend being peculiarly 

 located as to the three glaciers, it was also peculiarly located 

 as to ancient streams. Where our city now lies nestling in a 

 beautiful valley, partially surrounded by hills, a wonderful 

 river once flowed. A stream three miles wide and one hun- 

 dred feet or more in depth, flowing from east to west. And 

 from the north a great tributary, whose mouth was three miles 

 wide, emptied its waters into the main stream exactly at this 

 point. If man could have stood upon the hills of Rum Village, 

 a vast panorama, of water would have met his gaze. To the 

 east, water as far as the eye could reach, and from five to six- 

 miles wide, passing at his feet and rolling onward to the south- 

 west, confined only by the hills on the north and on the south. 

 Looking north, a tributary stream three miles wide and limited 

 only by the horizon. And primitive man was here. 



The stream to which I refer was the great Kankakee 

 river, which had its origin at the foot of the Saginaw glacier, 

 and received tributary streams from the Maumee and Michigan 

 glaciers. And became in time, the outlet for the waters flow- 

 ing south from Lake Huron through Saginaw Bay, before 

 they secured an outlet through the Niagara river. This 

 great valley served as a waterway for the waters during the 

 withdrawal of the first ice sheet, from the fact that its channel 

 was silted up like all other great stream valleys during the 

 Champlain epoch or age of depression, and was never re- 

 excavated to any extent, and remains to-day a filled valley. 

 It probably conveyed the waters during the advance of the 

 last ice sheet, but soon after the sheet began to withdraw, the 

 waters found an outlet into Lake Michigan, leaving the 



