however, unite, but, instead, become parallel, and are continued as the sides of a broad watercourse, through which the great lake basin then discharged its surplus waters, southwestwardly, into the valley of the Wabash River, and thence to the Mississippi. At New Haven, this channel is not less than a mile and a half broad, and has an average depth of twenty feet, with sides and bottom of drift. For twenty-five miles this character continues, and there is no notable fall. Three miles above Huntington, Indiana, however, the drift bottom is replaced by a floor of Niagara limestone, and the descent becomes comparatively quite rapid. At Huntington, the valley is walled, on one side at least, by rock in situ. In the eastern portion of this ancient river-bed, the Maumee and its branches have cut channels fifteen to twenty-five feet deep, without meeting the underlying limestone. Most of the interval from Ft. Wayne to Huntington is occupied by a marsh, over which meanders Little River, an insignificant stream whose only claim to the title of river seems to lie in the magnitude of the deserted channel of which it is sole occupant. At Huntington, the Wabash emerges from a narrow cleft, of its own carving, and takes possession of the broad trough to which it was once an humble tributary."

Within the personal knowledge of men, the Wabash River has been, and is, only a rivulet, a shriveled, dried up representative in comparison with its greatness in pre-historic times, when it bore in a broader channel the waters of Lakes Erie and Huron, a mighty flood, southward to the Ohio. Whether the change in the direction of the flow of Lakes Erie, Huron and Michigan toward the River St. Lawrence, instead of through the Wabash and Illinois Rivers respectively, is because hemispheric depression has taken place more rapidly in the vicinity of the lakes than farther southward, or that the earth's crust south of the lakes has been arched upward by subterraneous influences, and thus caused the lakes to recede, or if the change has been produced by depression in one direction and elevation in the other, combined, is not our province to discuss. The fact, however, is well established by the most abundant and conclusive evidence to the scientific observer.

The portage, or carrying place, of the Wabash,* as known to the early explorers and traders, between the Maumee and Wabash, or rather the head of Little River, called by the French "La Petit Rivière," commenced directly at Ft. Wayne; although, in certain seasons of the year, the waters approach much nearer and were united by a low piece

*Schoolcraft's Travels in the Central Portions of the Mississippi Valley," in the year 1821, pp. 90, 91. In this year, Mr. Schoolcraft made an examination of the locality, with a view to furnish the public information on the practicability of a canal to unite the waters of the Maumee and the Wabash. It was at a time when great interest existed through all parts of the country on all subjects of internal navigation.

PORTAGE OF THE WABASH.

23

of ground or marsh (an arm or bay of what is now called Bear Lake), where the two streams flow within one hundred and fifty yards of each other and admitted of the passage of light canoes from the one to the other.

The Miami Indians knew the value of this portage, and it was a source of revenue to them, aside from its advantages in enabling them to exercise an influence over adjacent tribes. The French, in passing from Canada to New Orleans, and Indian traders going from Montreal and Detroit, to the Indians south and westward, went and returned by way of Ft. Wayne, where the Miamis, kept carts and pack-horses, with a corps of Indians to assist in carrying canoes, furs and merchandise around the portage, for which they charged a commission. At the great treaty of Greenville, 1795, where General Anthony Wayne met the several Wabash tribes, he insisted, as one of the fruits of his victory over them, at the Fallen Timbers, on the Maumee, the year before, that they should cede to the United States a piece of ground six miles square, where the fort, named in honor of General Wayne, had been erected after the battle named, and on the site of the present city of Ft. Wayne; and, also, a piece of territory two miles square at the carrying place. The distinguished warrior and statesman, "Mishekun-nogh-quah" (as he signs his name at this treaty), or the Little Turtle on behalf of his tribe, objected to a relinquishment of their right to their ancient village and its portage, and in his speech to General Wayne said: "Elder Brother,-When our forefathers saw the French and English at the Miami village - that 'glorious gate' which your younger brothers [meaning the Miamis] had the happiness to own, and through which all the good words of our chiefs had to pass [that is, messages between the several tribes] from north to south and from east to west, the French and English never told us they wished to purchase our lands from us. The next place you pointed out was the Little River, and said you wanted two miles square of that place. This is a request that our fathers the French or British never made of us; it was always ours. This carrying place has heretofore proved, in a great degree, the subsistence of your brothers. That place has brought to us, in the course of one day, the amount of one hundred dollars. Let us both own this place and enjoy in common the advantages it affords." The Little Turtle's speech availed nothing.*

The St. Joseph of Lake Michigan, a fine stream of uniform, rapid current, reaches its most southerly position near the city of South Bend, Indiana,—the city deriving its name from the bend of the river;

* Minutes of the Treaty of Greenville: American State Papers on Indian Affairs. vol. 1, pp. 576, 578.

here the river turns northward, reënters the State of Michigan and discharges into the lake. West of the city is Lake Kankakee, from which the Kankakee River takes its rise. The distance intervening between the head of this little lake and the St. Joseph is about two miles, over a piece of marshy ground, where the elevation is so slight "that in the year 1832 a Mr. Alexander Croquillard dug a race, and secured a flow of water from the lake to the St. Joseph, of sufficient power to run a grist and saw mill.” *

This is the portage of the Kankakee, a place conspicuous for its historical reminiscences. It was much used, and offered a choice of routes to the Illinois River, and also to the Wabash, by a longer landcarriage to the upper waters of the Tippecanoe. A memoir on the Indians of Canada, etc., prepared in the year 1718 (Paris Documents, vol. 1, p. 889), says: "The river St. Joseph is south of Lake Michigan, formerly the Lake of the Illinois; many take this river to pass to the Rocks [as Fort St. Louis, situated on 'Starved Rock' in La Salle county, Illinois, was sometimes called], because it is convenient, and they thereby avoid the portages des Chaines' and 'des Perches," "two long, difficult carrying places on the Desplaines, which had to be encountered in dry seasons, on the route by the way of Chicago Creek.

The following description of the Kankakee portage, and its adjacent surroundings, is as that locality appeared to Father Hennepin, when he was there with La Salle's party of voyagers two hundred years ago the coming December: "The next morning (December 5, 1679) we joined our men at the portage, where Father Gabriel had made the day before several crosses upon the trees, that we might not miss it another time." The voyagers had passed above the portage without being aware of it, as the country was all strange to them. We found here a great quantity of horns and bones of wild oxen, buffalo, and also some canoes the savages had made with the skins of beasts, to cross the river with their provisions. This portage lies at the farther end of a champaign; and at the other end to the west lies a village of savages,- Miamis, Mascoutines and Oiatinons (Weas), who live together. "The river of the Illinois has its source near that village, and springs out of some marshy lands that are so quaking that one can scarcely walk over them. The head of the river is only a league and a half from that of the Miamis (the St. Joseph), and so our portage was not long. We marked the way from place to place, with some trees, for the convenience of those we expected after us; and left at the portage as well as at Fort

* Prof. G. M. Levette's Report on the Geology of St. Joseph County: Geological Survey of Indiana for the year 1873, p. 459.

Miamis (which they had previously erected at the mouth of the St. Joseph), letters hanging down from the trees, containing M. La Salle's instructions to our pilot, and the other five-and-twenty men who were to come with him." The pilot had been sent back from Mackinaw with La Salle's ship, the Griffin, loaded with furs; was to discharge the cargo at the fort below the mouth of Niagara River, and then bring the ship with all dispatch to the St. Joseph.

"The Illinois River (continues Hennepin's account) is navigable within a hundred paces from its source,-I mean for canoes of barks of trees, and not for others,- but increases so much a little way from thence, that it is as deep and broad as the Meuse and the Sambre joined together. It runs through vast marshes, and although it be rapid enough, it makes so many turnings and windings, that after a whole day's journey we found that we were hardly two leagues from the place we left in the morning. That country is nothing but marshes, full of alder trees and bushes; and we could have hardly found, for forty leagues together, any place to plant our cabins, had it not been for the frost, which made the earth more firm and consistent."

CHAPTER IV.

RAINFALL.

AN interesting topic connected with our rivers is the question of rainfall. The streams of the west, unlike those of mountainous districts, which are fed largely by springs and brooks issuing from the rocks, are supplied mostly from the clouds. It is within the observation of persons who lived long in the valleys of the Wabash and Illinois, or along their tributaries, that these streams apparently carry a less volume of water than formerly. Indeed, the water-courses seem to be gradually drying up, and the whole surface of the country drained by them has undergone the same change. In early days almost every land-owner on the prairies had upon his farm a pond that furnished an unfailing supply of water for his live stock the year around. These never went dry, even in the driest seasons.

Formerly the Wabash afforded reliable steamboat navigation as high up as La Fayette. In 1831, between the 5th of March and the 16th of April, fifty-four steamboats arrived and departed from Vincennes. In the months of February, March and April of the same year, there were sixty arrivals and departures from La Fayette, then a village of only three or four hundred houses; many of these boats were large side-wheel steamers, built for navigating the Ohio and Mississippi, and known as New Orleans or lower river boats. The writer has the concurrent evidence of scores of early settlers with whom he has conversed that formerly the Vermilion, at Danville, had to be ferried on an average six months during the year, and the river was considered low when it could be forded at this place without water running into the wagon bed. Now it is fordable at all times, except when swollen with freshets, which now subside in a very few days, and often within as many hours. Doubtless, the same facts can be affirmed of the many other tributaries of the Illinois and Wabash whose names have been already given.

The early statutes of Illinois and Indiana are replete with special laws, passed between the years 1825 and 1840, when the people of these two states were crazed over the question of internal navigation, providing enactments and charters for the slack-water improvement of

*Tanner's View of the Mississippi, published in 1832, p. 154.