Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/207

Rh suburban homes, forced the water of the Ohio southward, over the watershed of the Licking, possibly into what is now the Kentucky River gorge. This course was pursued for an indefinite period; but, when the ice had retired, the river returned to its own channel near Cincinnati. Finding, however, its outlet to the north choked by débris of the glacier, and the former barrier of land between Price Hill and the mouth of the Licking lowered or cut away, it followed the line of drainage it holds at the present time.

"If the eye of savage man gazed upon the site of Cincinnati before the age of ice, he beheld a vastly different scene from what he would behold now. Standing on the highest point of Mount Auburn [Walnut Hills], he looked south over a deep, rocky gorge, through which rolled the mighty Ohio. On the west was the rocky shore of Price Hill extending in an unbroken line north and south to Kentucky. The Licking River entered as a tributary here. On the east was another waste of water rolling its dark tide northward, and joining the western branch beyond the hills of Clifton. No broad expanse of valley nor of rolling plain lay beneath him; no city was there, teeming with life and humming with industry; no railroad trains were panting and puffing, holding their way toward sites of unknown towns. But the water swiftly, with sullen roar re-echoing from cliff to cliff', pursued its journey toward its unknown grave. No steamer plowed its waters, but dugout or canoe probably carried primitive man from camp to camp or shore to shore. Where once the imaginary savage stood are now palatial mansions. Where once the waters spread their turbid tide is now a busy city of four hundred thousand people. The water which was once cleft only by the prow of frail canoe is now a highway for many floating palaces. Where once the stream pursued its northward course, the iron horse carries thousands daily to and from their homes in the wide and fertile Mill Creek Valley. Never would all this have been had not the Glacial period wrought its wondrous change. But the ice filled the valley and forced the river from its course. When permitted to return, the ancient channel was so filled with débris that a new one must be cut out, leaving the old one to 1)e utilized by man as a way for his iron servant and as a place whereon to build his cities."

An inspection of the general map (Map I) will show that this ancient deflection of the Ohio by way of Hamilton is in analogy with the course of the river in many other i)laces, as at Beaver, Pa., and below Marietta, Ohio, and that Prof. James's discovery of the buried channel, showing the ancient deflection by way of