Page 3 Advertisements Column 1

Opunake Times, Volume II, Issue 58, 22 January 1895, Page 3

Professor J. W. Spencer, an eminent American geologist, has arrived at the conclusion that the great lakes of North America lie in valleys of erosion formed during the Icc Age, when the continent stood 3000 feet above its present level. The bed of an ancient river, called the Laurentian River, can still be traced from Lake Michigan through .Lake Huron to Georgian Bay, and thence to Lake Toronto. At one time a great part of the lake region was united in a single sheet of water, which divided into two basins, one comprising Lakes Superior, Michigan, and Huron, the other Lakes Ontario and Erie. The three upper lakes discharged into the St Lawrence by way of Lake Nipissing and the Ottawa river, and the two lower by the Niagra river. At this period the fall of this river was only 220 feet, but increased to 320 feet in course of time, and the waters of the upper lakes eventually pass through it. The falls of Niagra have according to Professor Spencer, been in existence for 31,000 years, but the drainage of the upper lakes has only passed over them for 8,000 years. So far as can be seen at present the great cataract will come to an end in from 7,000 to 8,000 years, before it has receded to Lake Erie, through the waters of the Upper lakes discharging into the Mississippi by way <,>f Chicago.