PREGLACIAL DRAINAGE. 309 



River valleys to Lake Erie, a little west of Ashtabula. This 

 was demonstrated by Mr. Hice, who discovered pot-holes 

 on the rock terraces of Beaver Creek all pointing northward. 

 This line of preglacial drainage of the Upper Ohio has been 

 chosen by the engineers as the best route for the canal to 

 connect Lake Erie with the Ohio Valley. The portion of the 

 Upper Ohio following this line in preglacial times is that above 

 Martinsville, where there is a well marked narrow place in 

 the gorge indicating a preglacial col between two sy seems of 

 drainage. The water, being thrown over this by the glacial 

 dam, speedily eroded a channel such that upon the melting 

 of the ice the water continued to flow in that direction. 



According to the investigations of Professors Tight and 

 Bownocker, it would seem, also, that the drainage of the Middle 

 Ohio was through buried channels leading to the northwest, 

 along a line nearly coinciding with the valley of the Scioto. 

 As will be detailed more fully in another chapter (p. 379, 

 seq.) the Middle Ohio, below Martinsville flowed southwest 

 as far as Huntington, West Virginia, where it was joined by 

 the Kanawha, a still larger stream coming down from the 

 Appalachian Mountains through the deserted channel of 

 Teazes Valley. At Huntington the united current turned 

 northward to the vicinity of Portsmouth at the mouth of the 

 present Scioto, where it was met by a shorter stream flowing 

 eastward -from a col in the Ohio at Manchester. Ten njiles 

 above Portsmouth, at Wheelersburgh the Little Scioto enters 

 the Ohio after having flowed for many miles through a broad 

 abandoned channel, which near the village of California 

 inosculates with another running northwestward into the 

 Scioto at Waverly. It is the opinion of Mr. Leverett, and of 

 Professors Tight and Bownocker, that the Kanawha drainage 

 in preglacial times took this course, and then proceeded in a 

 northward direction through the buried channel of the Upper 

 Scioto. 



A little below Columbus this stream was joined by one 



