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Harvey Rice
Published by Good Press, 2021
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It is not improbable that the entire chain of our great northwestern lakes, from Ontario to Superior, were created by the volcanic collapse of a mountain range that once occupied the same localities. Of this fact there are plausible, if not irresistible, evidences to be seen in the volcanic character of the rocks at various points along the entire coast. Nor can it be very well doubted that subsequent volcanic action has elevated much of the coast into several corresponding ridges, from one to two miles apart, which distinctly mark the successive boundaries of these inland seas.
Nature removes mountains, or creates them, at pleasure. She also makes and unmakes lakes and rivers, to say nothing of oceans and continents. In California, and doubtless in other parts of the world, there are as many dead as living rivers. The miners of California have already discovered the old channels of a dozen or more dead rivers, as they call them, encased and sealed up in the very heart of the mountain ranges, and extending in some instances hundreds of miles in the general direction of the ranges, and leaping from mountain to mountain at a common level or grade. These ancient channels are filled with sand, gravel, and small bowlders, evidently worn and polished by long attrition. Some of the channels are a mile wide, or more, and from ten to one hundred feet deep. In the angles or eddies, the sands are found to be exceedingly rich in gold, sometimes yielding fifty dollars or more to the cubic yard. It is estimated that over five hundred millions of dollars have already been taken from the sands of these dead rivers, and that they are now yielding at least ten millions a year. It is evident that these dead rivers must have been living rivers long before the volcanic era arrived, which elevated the ancient valleys into mountain ranges, and depressed the ancient mountain ranges into valleys.
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