The shore cliffs and beaches of this ancient Lake Iroquois have today an unique economic value. They are clearly marked and furnish their own proofs. On the New York side of the lake numerous morainic hills rise to heights of from sixty to two hundred and fifty feet, showing gravel bars and strata of beach sand and clay. There are indications that the original outlet of the glacial lake was as far inland as the present town of Rome, thence to the Hudson. The clearest evidences of the Iroquois beach, however, are on the Canadian side, along the two V-shaped arms at the western end of the lake-from Niagara westward to Hamilton, forty miles, and from Hamilton northeast to Toronto, an equal distance. Thence for a hundred miles, along the north coast of the lake, to Trenton, the beach may be traced with comparatively few interruptions.

What is sometimes spoken of as the "Garden of Canada" now stretches along the lake front for forty or fifty miles between the Niagara river and Hamilton. It is a narrow strip of evenly laid and gently terraced fruit land, from two to

seven miles wide, running between the shore and the foot of the Niagara escarpment. In other words, it is the beach of the old Lake Iroquois turned to farms. There is perhaps no richer bit of farming country in all America. The shore cliff of the ancient lake, now a ridge of hills which at its greatest height reaches to three hundred feet, shelters it on one side, and on the other it is tempered by the lake; thus protected, 40,000 acres of orchard and 6,000 acres of vineyard produce every kind of domestic fruit which it is possible to grow outside of the tropics. The clayey and sandy loams of the old beach afford the best of soils for the peach, pear, plum, and grape, and are ready leveled, with a gentle slope to the lake. This fifty-mile garden is of nature's own making and for many years has been supporting a lucrative industry.

The cities of Hamilton and St. Catharines, in this district, are both built upon the gravel bars of the old beach and to this fact owe their excellent drainage. Farther on, on the north shore of the lake, Toronto stands upon an Iroquois terrace at the foot of a steep shore cliff

of boulder clay. A few miles east of Toronto is the one and only point where the ancient shore line touches the present shore of Lake Ontario, and where a part of the old Iroquois beach still exists as the present lake beach. At this point the Scarboro heights show a cliff of from two hundred to three hundred and fifty feet, worn sharply perpendicular by wave action. The section of the old cliff thus exposed proves the glacial theory. It is a formation of boulder clay, with strata of silty and fossiliferous sand, indicating successive glacial and interglacial periods. The story of the ages can be read with greater clearness here than at any other point along the lake; first a great glacial deposit, then an interval during which interglacial strata were laid by wave action, then another glacier, and so on. Remains of prehistoric animal and plant life have been discovered, and excavations in Toronto streets have laid bare numerous fossils of mammoths and flora that indicate a one-time period of tropical

climate, intervening between cold climate periods.

For a hundred miles further along the north shore are numerous beaches and bars of gravel, with spits built across what were once the mouths of bays. These were without doubt laid by the action of water in the Iroquois age. They are of economic value today, since they furnish good drainage for farm premises, the best foundations for public highways, and abundant material for road building and concrete. Several immense gravel pits are being used as a railway ballast supply, and two railroads run for several miles at a stretch along the firm and even gravel bed laid ready at hand for them. At Toronto and Hamilton, Iroquois beach sand is used for building purposes, and the clay beds of the old lake slopes furnish unlimited material for numerous brickyards.

The power works at Niagara Falls trace back to a kindred cause. Whether or not the Niagara river was pre-glacial,

the basin of Lake Ontario remained after the great glacial movements so much lower than the level of the Upper Lakes that the latter have ever since overflowed into it. A sudden drop from the level of the river to that of the lake brought the falls into being; but the cataract was at first at or near the shore of Lake Iroquois -that is, at the point where the escarpment is now broken between Lewiston and Queenston. Then the volume of water began to eat away the rock over which it fell, and as it gradually cut out the Niagara Gorge the falls receded. They are now seven miles up the river, and the wearing-back process is still going on. Just how long it has taken the Niagara to cut this seven-mile gorge no one knows, though it is the key to many mysteries; but it is thought by geologists that the cataract began to recede at about the time that Lake Iroquois came into existence, estimated at, say, 35,000 years ago.

Still another ancient cause affects the industrial geography of today. The fact that there was a differentiation in the prehistoric lake levels has already been referred to. The reason was a gradual

rising of the land toward the northeast. Evidences of this exist in the old beach lines, which can be traced today at different elevations on either side of a point, which, like a fulcrum, remained constant. The tilting of the beach in the northeast brought down the water level at that end of the lake and raised it at the other or southwest end.

Now this mysterious rising of the land is still going on, and the fact that it surely has an effect upon the levels of the Great Lakes is of some present economic importance. It does not now concern Lake Ontario alone. At Chicago, for instance, the water level is rising about nine feet in a hundred years; and if this continues, as it probably will, Lake Michigan may some day overflow into the Illinois river, while the entire Upper Lake system may find an outlet down the Mississippi valley. That will mean that Niagara will some day run dry, or will at least receive only the water from its neighboring streams. But that is some thousands of years in the future. If it does ever come to pass, engineering genius yet to be will find a new power supply and a way of utilizing it.

IN

N the days before the placer diggings played out, Windy Gulch showed all the ear-marks and peculiarities of prosperity. Josh Curtis's general store flourished, Billy Dixon's booze emporium flourished, the

tin horns flourished and everything moved along as smoothly and hilariously as a Dutch song.

None of us figured that those diggings would play out, but they did. We came to the end of the pay dirt so sudden that it made our heads swim.

We'd been working a stretch of shore, along the east side of the creek, which ran back from it about fifty feet, to the rock wall, that rose straight up a hundred feet, on that side of the gulch. The pay dirt ran for a mile up and down the creek,

It was rich dirt, too; so rich that none of us took the bother to try and find out where it came from, but were satisfied to just wash, wash, wash, and take out the dust in quantities that would have put us in the class that endow libraries and colleges, and get run down in the newspapers for having enough money to do it with-if it hadn't been for the tin horns.

Tin horns are a necessary commodity in a mining camp; leastwise they are always there, as long as the money lasts, and there were no lack of them in Windy Gulch. Just as regular as we'd wash out our little sackful of dust, we'd drop into Billy's and pass it over the tables to them tin horns, in exchange for the innocent pastime of seeing ourselves lose it. Not that any of us cared. We went calmly on, throwing our hard dug wealth to the winds, in the firm conviction that there was plenty more where that came from, and all we had to do was dig.

Then, one day, we awoke to the realization that there was nothing left to dig. We had uncovered the whole stretch of

that shore, clear down to the bed rock, and cleaned it up, to the last panful. The diggings were played out. A day or two later the tin horns folded their tables and silently drifted away into the landscape, taking with them the bulk of our hard dug gold. Then Mr. Hawkins bobbed serenely in and bobbed right out again.

Hawkins was a little, rosey posey, jolly, red nosey sort of a chap, who drove through town on a buckboard, loudly announcing that he would give a sleight-ofhand performance in the leading saloon that evening. As Billy's was the only one, we all congregated there to see the show.

Mr. Hawkins had a gift of gab that was instructive to listen to, and he kept up a steady fire of it all through the entertainment. Some of the tricks he did were right clever; taking rabbits and things out of our pockets and making them disappear into the air again. He kept us interested for a good hour, and then he got down to the main stunt of the evening. Out of the trunk he had his things in, he took a large, wicker covered demijohn.

"Gentlemen," says he, "I will now show you the most miraculous feat of legerdemain ever enacted in this or any other country. I performed this sleight-of-hand trick, gentlemen, before all the crowned heads of Europe-ever thought of performing a sleight-of-hand trick."

Rattling along thuswise, he placed the demijohn on the table and went down into his trunk again. This time he brought out six drinking glasses, which he placed in a row on the table.

"Now, gentlemen," says he, picking up the demijohn, "I have here, in my hand, an object with which you are all familiar. I have no doubt but that, at one time or another, you have used this use