GLACIAL DAMS, LARES, AND WATERFALLS. 381 



with a deposit of river- pebbles covered many feet deep with 

 a mixture of sand and clayey loam. In some places this loam 

 is from thirty to forty feet deep, extending for several miles 

 without interruption, as at Long Level, about the middle of 

 the valley. Here a section, about half a mile long and twenty- 

 five feet deep, shows at the top a stiff stratum of clay con- 

 taining wood at a depth of seven feet. Immediately below 

 is sand cemented together by the infiltrations of iron. The 

 stratum above, containing the wood, had never been disturbed, 

 and the wood is remarkably fresh in its whole appearance. 

 It is scarcely possible that it should have remained in such a 

 position during all the time required for the erosion of the 

 Ohio Valley and its tributaries from the level of Teazes Val- 

 ley to its present level, two hundred and fifty feet below. 

 Besides, there are many other things to show that the deposit 

 was in slack water rather than on the flood-plain of a running 

 stream. Unlike the deposit of a river on its banks, in this 

 case the silt extends clear across the valley, covering every- 

 thing to a uniform depth, except where it has been removed 

 by subsequent irregular erosion. 



Another evidence of the recent date of this deposit of 

 river-silt in Teazes Valley, as compared with the erosion of 

 the valley itself, appears in the relation of the transverse 

 water-ways to it. Mud River and Hurricane Creek are two 

 small streams rising some little distance to the south, but 

 now either joining the valley, or crossing it at a level sixty 

 or seventy feet lower than that of its rocky bottom. Mud 

 River joins it at Milton, and then turns west and follows its 

 course to the Guyandotte. But the level of Mud River, 

 even where it now joins the valley, is one hundred and 

 twenty feet lower, and this in a channel worn in the solid 

 sandstone rock. Hurricane Creek is a still smaller stream, 

 and crosses the valley within a few miles of its eastern end, 

 emptying into the Kanawha some miles lower down. Where 

 this small stream crosses Teazes Valley its bed is sixty or 

 more feet lower down in the rock than that on which the 

 pebbles and silt rest throughout the valley, and these de- 



