between the ice lobe and its terminal lateral moraine, and ter- 

 minated the flow of waters from the Michigan basin into the 

 Dowagiac river, leaving a broad, water-worn plain leading from 

 the Dowagiac river back northwestward to the Michigan basin. 



Here commenced a system of river robbing. The Dowa- 

 giac river doubled upon itself at an angle of forty-five degrees, 

 followed the abandoned channel of its former tributary and 

 discharged its waters into Lake Michigan, leaving in turn a 

 well-worn channel from three to four miles wide and thirteen 

 miles long, leading to the great trunk stream or Kankakee. 

 The distance from the point where the Dowagiac emptied its 

 waters into the Kankakee to St. Joseph, Mich., is thirty-eight 

 miles, with a fall of one hundred and forty-one feet; from the 

 same point to Momence, 111., the distance is ninety-two miles, 

 with a fall of ninety-three feet. It can be readily understood 

 that, with the first annual flood, a part of the waters of the 

 Kankakee would follow the abandoned Dowagiac channel, 

 mingling with the Dowagiac, and onward into Lake Michigan 

 at St. Joseph. The fall over the new route being three and a 

 half times greater than that over the old route, the new channel 

 rapidly cut through the old river deposit, finally claiming all 

 of the waters of the once mighty Kankakee, leaving its valley 

 from South Bend to the Desplaines a geological monument to 

 to tell of its eternal past. 



The physical force which most likely turned the current of 

 the Kankakee into the channel of the Dowagiac, was an ice 

 gorge, forming seven miles below South Bend, where a jetting 

 point from the Michigan moraine extends out into the valley 

 proper two miles and a half in an almost transverse direction, 

 and known as Crum's Point. Just below this point, we find an 

 ancient flood plain two miles wide, which was supplied with 

 overflow water from the Michigan basin, and which entirely 

 subsided when the Michigan waters receded from the rim of its 

 basin. This valley is drained by a small, meandering stream 

 known as Grape Vine creek, the rudiment of a mighty glacial 

 stream. Strong and well pronounced evidences of an ice gorge 

 or dam having formed at Crum's Point and extending up the 



