370 
GEOLOGY OF THE SECOND DISTRICT, 
The small uplifts in this county, in addition to the effects already spoken of, have produced 
a slight anticlinal axis, which traverses the county from a point half way between French 
creek and Cape Vincent, nearly east and west across the county. It does not, however, dis¬ 
turb the face of the country, and would be unsuspected without an examination of the present 
water courses. The effect has not been sufficient to overbalance the combined effect of the 
northeast fractures, and the currents which have swept through them. Some of the most 
distinctly marked valleys are the following : 1st, from Chamont, passing through Depauville 
to Lafargeville, a distance of twenty miles ; 2d, from Watertown towards Evans’ mills, on 
a line with the deep channellings already described. Three or four others, of less length and 
importance, on the north side of Black river, I pass by unnoticed. 
Southwest of the river, extending up from Henderson towards Watertown, is another 
produced by the operation of the same class of causes already adverted to. 
In pursuing our examination in the southern townships, we observe the same arrangement 
or direction of the rivers; but some doubts necessarily arise, when we examine critically 
the rocks and all the conditions of the surface. Probably, however, some of these causes 
have influenced the direction of the southern creeks, in order to give them a course parallel 
to those already noticed ; but these creeks have, for a large portion of their distance, cut 
at least apparently their own channels. Rising in the highest ground, both geographically 
and geologically, in the fragile slates and shales of Loraine, Rodman, and the adjacent part 
of the county of Lewis, they have formed deep narrow gorges, in which they flow for the 
first twenty miles of their route to Lake Ontario. At their egress from these gorges, they 
have also worn into the trenton limestone a few feet; but when we compare the phenomena 
presented by these gorges, with the wider and shallower valleys north of Black river, we see 
that the latter are recent, and that they must have been formed principally by the present 
creeks which flow through them. 
Instead of confining our views to Jefferson county, we may extend them to the correspond¬ 
ing part of St. Lawrence, or rather from the foot of Lake Ontario to the head of Lake St. 
Francis, a distance of one hundred miles. In this distance, taking in a breadth of fifteen 
miles upon the east side of the St. Lawrence, we discover the whole of this area of fifteen 
hundred square miles, channelled and grooved in the same manner as the parts of Jefferson 
which have been under consideration. We may look first at the direction of the rivers ; they 
all fall into channels determined by previous fractures. The fact that in Jefferson they run 
southwest, is a matter of no consequence ; the anticlinal ridge is so slight that the fractures 
cross it, or are continued through it from both sides. We may look at the lakes ; we see that 
their longer axes lie parallel to the valleys already described. We may regard them all in 
the same light that we do Lake St. Francis — merely an expansion of the St. Lawrence ; so 
the smaller lakes are only deeper and wider channels of the creeks and rivers which flow 
through ; such channels, from causes not well determined, having been more deeply as well 
as more widely excavated. 
