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HAMILTON.

HAMILTON was the second county established in the Northwestern Territory. It was formed January 2, 1790, by proclamation of Governor St. Clair, and named from Gen. Alexander Hamilton. Its original boundaries were thus defined: "Beginning on the Ohio river, at the confluence of the Little Miami, and down the said Ohio to the mouth of the Big Miami; and up said Miami to the standing stone forks or branch of said river, and thence with a line to be drawn due east to the Little Miami, and down said Little Miami river to the place of beginning." The surface is generally rolling; soil on the uplands clay, and in the valleys deep alluvion, with a substratum of sand. Its agriculture includes a great variety of fruits and vegetables for the Cincinnati market.

Area about 400 square miles. In 1887 the acres cultivated were 68,458; in pasture, 19,468; woodland, 10,774; lying waste, 5,619; produced in wheat, 163,251 bushels; rye, 34,390; buckwheat, 110; oats, 116,500; barley, 34,390; corn, 468,501; broom corn, 2,345 pounds brush; meadow hay, 16,573 tons; clover hay, 3,915; potatoes, 190,398 bushels; tobacco, 25,460 pounds; butter, 648,910; cheese, 9,950; sorghum, 15 gallons; maple syrup, 454; honey, 7,413 pounds; eggs, 327,650 dozen; grapes, 235,235 pounds; wine, 3,091 gallons; sweet potatoes, 11,314 bushels; apples, 1,910; peaches, 2,327; pears, 1,195; wool, 9,405 pounds; milch cows owned, 9,714; milk, 3,779,048 gallons. School census, 1888, 99,049; teachers, 1,031; miles of railroad track, 545.

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Population of Hamilton, in 1820, was 31,764; 1830, 52,380; 1840, 80,165; 1860, 216,410; 1880, 313,374; of whom 191,509 were born in Ohio; 10,586, Kentucky; 6,468, Indiana; 4,362, New York; 4,185, Pennsylvania; 2,361, Virginia; 53,252, German Empire; 16,991, Ireland; 4,099, England and Wales; 1,787, France; 1,308, British America; 796, Scotland. Census, 1890, 374,573. Before the war much attention was given to the cultivation of vineyards upon the hillsides of the Ohio for the manufacture of wine, and it promised to be a great business when the change in climate resulted disastrously.

ANTIQUITIES.

THE GREAT DAM AT CINCINNATI IN THE ICE AGE.

The country in the vicinity of Cincinnati owes its unsurpassed beauty to the operations of Nature during the glacial era. It was the ice movements that gave it those fine terraces along the valleys and graceful contours of formation on the summits of the hills that were so attractive to the pioneers. Here it was that the great ice movement from the north ended. As has been remarked, "those were the days of the beautiful lake rather than the beautiful river."

No single cause has done more to diversify the surface of the country, to add to the attractiveness of the scenery and to furnish the key by which the condition of the Ice Age can be reproduced to the mind's eye than glacial dams. To them we owe the present existence of nearly all the waterfalls in North America, as well as nearly all the lakes.

A glacial dam across the Ohio river is supposed to have existed at the site of Cincinnati during the Ice Age, and the evidence supporting the theory is so full and conclusive that its existence can almost be assumed as an absolute certainty.

The evidences of the former existence of this dam and the lake caused thereby were first discovered and the attention of the scientific world attracted thereto, in the summer of 1882, by Prof. G. Frederick Wright, of Oberlin, whose valuable researches on glacial phenomena have given him a world-wide reputation. The facts here given are extracted from Prof. Wright's recently published volume, "The Ice Age in North America," a work scientific, but plain to the commonest understanding, intensely interesting and an inestimably valuable contribution to the sum of human knowledge.

"The ice came down through the trough of the Ohio, and meeting with an obstruction, crossed it so as to completely choke the channel, and form a glacial dam high enough to raise the level of the water five hundred and fifty feet-this being the height of the water shed to the south. The consequences following are interesting to trace.

The bottom of the Ohio river at Cincinnati is 447 feet above the sea-level. A dam of 553 feet would raise the water in its rear to a height of 1,000 feet above the tide. This would produce a long narrow lake, of the width of the eroded trough of the Ohio, submerge the site of Pittsburg to a depth of 300 feet, and make slack-water up the Monongahela nearly to Grafton, W. Va., and up the Allegheny as far as Oil City. All the tributaries of the Ohio would likewise be filled to this level with the back-water. The length of this slack-water lake in the main valley, to its termination up either the Allegheny or the Monongahela, was not far from one thousand miles. The conditions were also peculiar in this, that all the northern tributaries head within the southern margin of the ice-front, which lay at varying distances to the north. Down these northern tributaries there must have poured during the summer months immense torrents of water to strand bowlder-laden icebergs on the summits of such high hills as were lower than the level of the dam."

Prof. E. W. Claypole, in an article read before the Geological Society of Edinburgh, and published in their "Transactions," has given a very vivid description of the scenes connected with the final breaking away of

the ice-barrier at Cincinnati. He estimates that the body of water held in check by this dam occupied 20,000 square miles, and that during the summer months, when the ice was most rapidly melting away, it was supplied with water at a rate that would be equivalent to a rainfall of 160 feet in a year. This conclusion he arrives at by estimating that ten feet of ice would annually melt from the portion of the State which was glaciated, and which is about twice the extent of the unglaciated portion. Ten feet over the glaciated portion is equal to twenty feet of water over the unglaciated. To this must be added an equal amount from the area farther back whose drainage was then into the upper Ohio. This makes forty feet per year of water so contributed to this lake-basin. Furthermore, this supply would all be furnished in the six months of warm weather, and to a large degree in the daytime, which gives the rate above mentioned.

The breaking away of the barrier to such a body of water is no simple affair. writer remarks:

As this

"The Ohio of to-day in flood is a terrible danger to the valley, but the Ohio then must have been a much more formidable river to the dwellers on its banks. The muddy waters rolled along, fed by innumerable rills of glacier-milk, and often charged with ice and stones. The first warm days of spring were the harbinger of the coming flood, which grew swifter and deeper as the summer came, and only subsided as the falling temperature of autumn locked up with frost the glacier fountains. The ancient Ohio river system was in its higher part a multitude of

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From Wright's Ice Age in North America; by courtesy of D. Appleton & Co., Publishers.

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glacial torrents rushing off the ice-sheet, carrying all before them, waxing strong beneath the rising sun, till in the afternoon the roar of the waters and their stony burden reached its maximum, as the sun slowly sank again diminished, and gradually died away during the night, reaching its minimum at sunrise.

"But with the steady amelioration of the climate, more violent and sudden floods ensued. The increasing heat of summer compelled the retreat of the ice from the Kentucky shore, where Covington and Newport now lie, and so lowered its surface that it fell below the previous out-flow point. The waters then took their course over the dam, instead of passing, as formerly, up the Licking and down the Kentucky river valleys. The spectacle of a great ice-cascade, or of long ice-rapids, was then exhibited at Cincinnati. This cataract or these rapids must have been several hundred feet high. Down these cliffs or this slope the water dashed, melting its own channel, and breaking up the foundations of its own dam. With the depression of the dam the level of the lake also fell. Possibly the change was gradual, and the dam and the lake went gently down together. Possibly, but not probably, this was the case. Far more likely is it that the melting was rapid, and that it sapped the strength of the dam faster than it lowered the water. This will be more probable if we consider the immense area to be drained. The catastrophe was then inevitable-the dam broke, and all the accumulated water of Lake Ohio was poured through the gap. Days or even weeks must have passed before it was all gone; but at last its bed was dry. The upper Ohio valley was free from water, and Lake Ohio had passed away.

"But the whole tale is not yet told. Not once only did these tremendous floods occur. In the ensuing winter the dam was repaired by the advancing ice, relieved from the melting effects of the sun and of the floods.

Year after year was this conflict repeated. How often we cannot tell. But there came at last a summer when the Cincinnati dam was broken for the last time; when the winter with its snow and ice failed to renew it, when the channel remained permanently clear, and Lake Ohio had disappeared forever from the geography of North America.

"How many years or ages this conflict between the lake and the dam continued it is quite impossible to say, but the quantity of wreckage found in the valley of the lower Ohio, and even in that of the Mississippi, below their point of junction, is sufficient to convince us that it was no short time. The Age of Great Floods' formed a striking episode in the story of the Retreat of the Ice.' Long afterwards must the valley have borne the marks of these disastrous torrents, far surpassing in intensity anything now known on earth. The great flood of 1885, when the ice-laden water slowly rose seventythree feet above low-water mark, will long be remembered by Cincinnati and her inhabitants. But that flood, terrible as it was, sinks into insignificance beside the furious torrents caused by the sudden, even though partial, breach of an ice-dam hundreds of feet in height, and the discharge of a body of water held behind it, and forming a lake of 20,000 square miles in extent.

"To the human dwellers in the Ohio valley-for we have reason to believe that the valley was in that day tenanted by manthese floods must have proved disastrous in the extreme. It is scarcely likely that they were often forecast. The whole population of the bottom lands must have been repeatedly swept away; and it is far from being unlikely that in these and other similar catastrophes in different parts of the world, which characterized certain stages in the Glacial era, will be found the far-off basis on which rest those traditions of a flood that are found among almost all savage nations, especially in the north temperate zone.

Madisonville, eight miles northeast of Cincinnati (in a cross valley about five miles in length, connecting Mill creek with the Little Miami back of Avondale, Walnut Hills and the observatory), is an extremely interesting region, as connected with the glacial period. This valley, or depression, is generally level, from one to two miles wide, and about 200 feet above the low water-mark in the Ohio, and from 200 to 300 feet below the adjacent hills. It is occupied by a deposit of gravel, sand and loam, belonging to the glacial-terrace epoch. In the article, "Glacial Man in Ohio," by Prof. Wright, in Vol. I., page 93, is given a map of this region. The article also speaks of the discoveries of Dr. C. L. Metz of two paleolithic implements, which prove that man lived in Ohio before the close of the glacial period, say from 8,000 to 10,000 years ago, before which there were no Niagara Falls and no Lake Erie.

The first implement was found at Madisonville by him, in 1885, while digging a cistern. "In making the excavation for this he penetrated the loam eight feet before reaching the gravel, and then near the surface of the gravel this implement was found. There is no chance for it to have been covered by any slide, for the plain is extensive and level-topped, and there had evidently been no previous disturbance of the gravel." "It is not smoothed, but simply a rudely chipped,

pointed weapon about three inches long." The other palæolith was found by Dr. Metz, in the spring of 1887, in an excavation in a similar deposit near Loveland, some thirty feet below the surface, and near where some mastodon bones had previously been found. It was an oblong stone about six inches long, four and a half inches wide, which had here been chipped all around to an edge. Similar discoveries have since been made in Tuscarawas county.

Dr. Metz has favored us with the following article upon discoveries in the mounds and earthworks of the lost race which inhabited this region after the glacial era. They They are all upon the surface, being built upon the summits of the glacial-terraces or upon the present flood plains.

THE PREHISTORIC MONUMENTS OF HAMILTON COUNTY.

The territory comprising Hamilton county appears to have been one of the great centres of the aboriginal inhabitants. This is evidenced by the great number of earthworks, mounds and extensive burial places found throughout the county.

Mounds and Earthworks.-The mounds and the earthworks are found most numerous in the valleys of the Little and Great Miami, and in the region between the Little Miami and Ohio rivers. Of the mounds, 437 have been observed in the county, the largest of which is located on the Levi Martin estate, about one mile east of the village of Newtown. The dimensions of this mound from actual measurements are as follows: Circumference at base, 625 feet; width at base, 150 feet; length at base, 250 feet; perpendicular height, 40 feet.

Earth Enclosures.-Of the earthworks, or enclosures, fifteen in number have been located, the principal ones being the "Fortified Hill" near the mouth of the great Miami river, figured and described by Squire and Davis in their "Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley" [see Plate IX., No. 2. Vol. I., Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge], and the very interesting earthworks located on the lands of Mr. Michael Turner, near the junction of the East Fork and Little Miami river in Anderson township, and which the writer takes the liberty to designate as the "Whittlesey and Turner group of works.' This group of works was first described by T. C. Day, Esq., in a paper entitled "The Antiquities of the Miami Valley," Cincinnati Chronicle, November, 1839, and subsequently, in 1850, were surveyed and described by Col. Charles Whittlesey in Vol. III., Article 7, Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge. Of this work, Mr. Day says: "The site of this stupendous fortification, if we may so call it, is a few rods to the right of the road leading from Newtown to Milford, and about midway between them. It is situated on a ridge of land that juts out from the third bottom of the Little Miami, and reaches within 300 yards of its bed. From the top of the ridge to low water-mark is probably 100 feet. It terminates with quite a sharp point, and its rides are very abrupt, bearing evident marks of having once been swept by some stream of water, probably the Miami. It forms an extremity of an immense bend,

curving into what is now called the third bottom, but which is evidently of alluvial formation. Its probable height is forty feet, and its length about a quarter of a mile before it expands out and forms the third alluvial bottom. About 150 yards from the extreme point of this ridge, the ancient workmen having cut a ditch directly through it, it is thirty feet in depth, its length, a semi-circular curve, is 500 feet, and its width at the top is eighty feet, having a level base of forty feet. At the time of its formation it was probably cut to the base of the ridge, but the washing of the rains has filled it up to its present height. Forty feet from the western side of the ditch is placed the low circular wall of the fort, which describes in its circumference an area of about four acres. The wall is probably three feet in mean height, and is composed of clay occasionally mixed with small flat river stone. It keeps at an exact distance from the top of the ditch, but approaches nearer to the edge of the ridge. The form of the fort is a perfect circle, and is 200 yards in diameter. Its western side is defended with a ditch, cut through in the same manner as the one on the eastern side. Its width and depth is the same, but its length is greater by 200 feet, as the ridge is that much wider than where the other is cut through. The wall of this fort keeps exactly the same distance from the top of this ditch as of the other, viz. forty feet. Its curve is exactly the opposite of that of the other, so as to form two segments of a circle. At the southeastern side of the fort there is an opening in the wall thirty-six yards wide, and opposite this opening is one of the most marked features of this wonderful monument. A causeway extends out from the ridge about 300 feet in length, 100 feet in width, with a gradual descent to the alluvial bottom at its base. The material of its construction is evidently a portion of the earth excavated from the ditches. "To defend this entrance they raised a mound of earth seven feet high, forty wide and seventy-five long. It is placed about 100 feet from the mouth of the causeway, and is so situated that its garrison could sweep it to its base.' The mound above referred to was explored by the writer under the auspices of Prof. F. W. Putnam, curator of the Peabody Museum of American Archæology and Ethnology, Cambridge, Mass.,

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