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deposits, and have not yet attained their base level. The Kan- 

 kakee valley at South Bend, where it escapes from between the 

 Maumee and Michigan moraines, is narrowed down to three 

 miles, with high, rugged banks and no flood plain. Five miles 

 east and up the valley from South Bend, it attains a width of 

 six miles, which width it holds, with slight variation, until it 

 reaches the rim of the Saginaw basin. This end of the valley 

 is thoroughly drained by the channel of the present St. Joseph 

 river, which has eroded through the old river drift to the 

 extent of from forty to fifty feet. There are a few peat bogs 

 and marshes lying back from the river, where the valley is 

 broad and the modern channel well to one side. Otherwise, 

 the old valley above South Bend is one vast, level sand-plain. 

 Below South Bend, where the old valley remains silted up, and 

 there is no modern channel for drainage purposes, the spring 

 waters escaping from beneath the Michigan moraine and from 

 the foot of the Maumee, also bubbling up from the bed of the 

 old stream itself, as I am informed by Mr. William Whitten, in 

 charge of rock excavations at Momence, has been productive 

 of a vast growth of peat or muck over the entire valley proper, 

 from South Bend to Momence. Beneath this peat bed, which 

 ranges from six to ten feet in depth, is found fine sand and 

 river gravel, as shown by excavations made in the construction 

 of a large ditch, made with the view of straightening the river. 

 This ditch commences at South Bend, is twenty feet wide, ten 

 feet deep and twenty miles long, which gives us a comprehen- 

 sive idea of the materials underlying the bog. If the stream 

 had not changed its course at South Bend and continued down 

 its original valley, eroding a channel or partially cleaning the 

 old silted valley to a depth of from fifty to sixty feet, as the 

 waters have done through their new course, rendering: to 

 the Kankakee valley thereby proper drainage, there would 

 never have been known a " Kankakee Marsh," but all that por- 

 tion of Indiana would have been a vast, sandy plain, covered 

 with oak or barrens timber, and in general appearance the same 

 as that part of the valley above South Bend. 



We have glanced rapidly over the formative history of our 



