Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/877

Rh, the current of the river was broken by rapids; for the thin layer of limestone which here overhangs the Niagara shale would barely be strong enough to sustain the tremendous volume of water and form a fall over its edge. The rate at which the gorge was excavated between Lewiston and the Whirlpool must have been rapid. The route was predetermined by a shallow valley, which had reduced the upper layer of limestone to a considerable extent. Thus there was never a fall at Lewiston, only a series of rapids drawing back to the Whirlpool, where the falls were started and whence only, and not from Lewiston, they have receded.

Professor R. S. Woodward, of the United States Geological Survey of the Falls, presented a report on the rate of recession, which he computed to be about 2·4 feet a year, or a mile in 2,300 years. Mr. G. L. Gilbert, also of the United States Geological Survey, gave an account of his observations of the lake -shore terraces, and the conclusions he had drawn from them respecting the subsidence of the lakes. Taking up Professor Woodward's estimate of the rate of recession of the falls, he remarked that it would make the work of excavation extend over 7,000 years. This was subject to various qualifications by channels of earlier origin, by different rocks of different thickness encountered from time to time in the wearing away process, and by the difference in the volume, breadth, and plunge of the river at various periods of its history. On the whole, he was inclined to the opinion that the estimate of 7,000 years should be regarded as a maximum. After one or two other speakers had taken part in the discussion, Professor Pohlman said that he was glad to find the "mountains of science" agreeing with "a mole-hill like himself" regarding the existence of a pre-glacial valley. Professor E. W. Claypole, in a paper on the "What might have been" of Buffalo and Chicago, showed that if the ice-barrier at Buffalo had been twenty -five feet higher than it was, or had the Mackinaw channel been freed from its barrier before the outlet from Lake Erie and Lake Ontario was unlocked, the drainage of the four lakes would have been reversed; the Mississippi would have taken the place of the St. Lawrence, Chicago of Buffalo, and Buffalo of Chicago.

An Æsthetic View of Polygamy.—Mr. George Ticknor Curtis, in his argument in the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Lorenzo Snow, plaintiff in error, takes a view of Mormon polygamy that we do not remember to have before observed to be insisted upon in the States. By this view the relation to all but a single wife is purely spiritual, and one simply of care-taking, with recollections only of past more intimate ties. The idea of it is given in the testimony of Harriet Snow, who was married to Snow in Nauvoo in 1846, and had never been divorced. She said: "He was not my husband in 1884, according to the general term of husband. He did not live with me as a wife. He had arranged for my support, and I drew it as common. In 1884 I looked upon him as my companion, the husband of my youth. In 1884 the marriage relation did not continue as it was in my young days. I was an old lady in 1884. I call myself a married lady. I was sealed to the defendant for time and for eternity. When a lady gets so that she can not bear children, then she is released from some of her duties as a wife. I mean that he is my companion, but not husband." According to Mr. Curtis's argument, Snow had duties to discharge toward Harriet and the other women similarly situated toward him, which duties, the attorney continues, "are natural, are of moral obligation, of perpetual obligation, and are duties which, when we consider how and when they were assumed, and how they have become woven into the texture of his life, it would be barbaric to punish." The question is, in fact, surrounded with more and greater embarrassments than the urgers of summary legislation to put down polygamy have apparently been ready to consider. The women, who profess to have acted conscientiously, are entitled to protection and provision whatever laws may be enacted. They have a right to be placed where they can be supported and can live respectably. The problem is one of the same kind as that which troubles Christian missionaries when they make converts in polygamous countries,