An interesting geological story, apropos here, which illustrates how remote natural causes may sometimes enter into human history, is given by Mr. Charles R. Dyer, in the Sixteenth Geological Report of Indiana (1888). The French in their intercourse with the Mississippi Valley, as even the casual reader of history is supposed to know, passed into the interior valley from the basin of the Great Lakes by the rivers of the two systems, making the connections over various short portages at watersheds where the navigable waters of opposite flowing streams almost met. There were six of seven of these trade routes, and one of the most direct, with a comparatively short and easy portage, was from Lake Erie up the Maumee to the point where Fort Wayne stands, thence about nine miles by level land to the Aboit, or Little Wabash, thence down the Wabash. An examination of the map reveals a peculiar natural feature at this portage. The St. Joseph and St. Mary's rivers, flowing, respectively, form the northeast and southeast, unite at the point farthest west, then, as the Maumee, double curiously on their previous courses and flow back to Lake Erie. The three, presenting a sagittate or arrow head form, reach into the fork formed by the branches of the Wabash, thus bringing the waters of the tow systems almost together at navigable points. This odd situation, Mr. Dryer explains in terms of glacial deposit, the explanation being that those vast lobes of ice in the glacial period crowding each other from north and east heaped up their ridges of morainic matter in such fashion as to determine the subsequent river valleys. In view of this theory, it is not fanciful to say that the blind forces of nature, long before the advent of man, predetermined very definitely the little chapter of French history in the Wabash Valley, and whatever relics of it may have survived in our later history. More than that, it determined at a later day a very important trade route (the Wabash and Erie Canal, which followed the Maumee and Wabash valleys) that played no little part in peopling and developing the Wabash Valley.