Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 264, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 November 1919 — LOST NIAGARA DISCOVERED. [ARTICLE]

LOST NIAGARA DISCOVERED.

A dead and buried Niagara, its thunders stilled for countless ages, once perhaps as great in height and volume of water as the present falls, has been unearthed by excavations made in the course of the new Welland ship canal near Thorold in southern Ontario. No memories of this lost Niagara linger even in aboriginal tradition. When it existed or when it ceased to exist has not even been conjectured. It may have been thundering in primeval solitudes before the age of man. The mastodon and the perodactyl may have pastured upon its brink.. piant-winger lizards may have sailed above its clouds of rainbow vapors. The engineers who partly uncovered it believe that it was the original Niagara marking the course of a paleolithic river that connected Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. Some fighty prehistoric cataclysm, it is supposed, diverted the course of the stream - and buried the falls and the old river bed level with the sur-t rounding country. The grave of this buried Niagara I is half a mile from‘the escapement of the present Canadian falls. A i deep, canyon-like valley through which the ship canal passes where Eight Mile creek once meandered on its way to Lake Ontario, is believed to have been the bed of the prehistoric river which furnished the waters of the giant falls their outlet to the sea. —Manufacturers’ News, Chicago.