FAYETTE COUNTY. 439 
solid earth, the currents of water carried away some of the material con- 
stituting the drift sediment of the former period. The channe’s of 
drainage mark the direction of the current. Within these channels the 
drift deposits were removed sometimes tothe bedded rock. The varying 
force of the currents distributed the material as we now see it. Strong 
currents carried all before them; weaker currents only the more refined 
sediment. Any current bearing substances along will deposit the 
heavier material first when the current becomes checked. It is thus 
that matters carried in currents of water become assorted and distributed. 
When a current bearing sediment finds a wider channel and expands, 
the current is checked at the side upon which it finds room to spread out. 
Here will be a deposit of the heavier part of its freight. If two cur- 
rents meet at the point of intersection, the currents will be retarded, es- 
pecially if one be more swollen than the other, and the heavier material 
carried will be deposited. Where now are mere brooks, the ample ex- 
tent of the washing, the broad valleys, show that rivers once flowed. 
Wherever the drift clays were not washed, the gravel lies interspersed 
through it; but where the clays are broken, where valleys have been cut 
in them, on the sides of these cuts, on the escarpment of the broken clay 
and gravel drift, the clay has been removed and the gravel is left 
in beds. Following the principles before referred to in regard to the 
laws of sedimentary deposits, the road-maker of to day may find the de- 
posits of gravel he needs. Along the declivity, where two former cur- 
rents met, far back from the meeting point of the diminutive stream of 
the present time, on a point and looking from the higher land, he who 
seeks this useful material necd not look in vain. As there were various 
levels of the water at that far distant period, so are there several eleva- 
tions at which gravel is actually found. In addition to those beds on the 
escarpment of the hills, there are found hillocks or natural mounds of 
gravel which represent eddies, or places in which for some cause the 
water was more quiet, and hence, unable to carry forward all its load of 
sediment. Besides these, the soil of the present bottoms is in many 
places underlaid with ample deposits of gravel. 
Drift:d wood is found in the blue clay in all our district. The instances 
in which wood has been found in the clay beds, penetrated in we!l-dig- 
ging, are by no means few, nearly every neighborhood furnishing one or 
more. A kind of jointed grass or rush was obtained from a well near 
Reeseville, in Clinton county. | 
Bones.—The gravel, which lay so long hidden from the knowledge of 
the present inhabitants, was almost uniformly made use of as places 
of interment by some former race of people. Scarcely a gravel bed ha 
