Great Lakes. Successive stages in the development of the Great Lakes, North America. C. The upper lakes, swollen into the ancestral Lake Algonquin, drain, together with Lake Erie, into a seaway that occupied the St. Lawrence valley, and extended over the site of Lake Ontario. An occasional overflow from Lake Michigan. spills into the Mississippi. D. The lakes approach their present-day outlines, the upper lakes draining into the dwindling St. Lawrence seaway through the valley of what is now the Ottawa River, E, Lake Erie; F, Finger Lakes of New York State; H, Lake Huron; S, Lake Superior. Holmes, 1953, p. 243. See also XII - 111.