mmmmmmm wmmga wBUiM i UMuiBB B Hiiwi B \m HB* LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. Chap.F.ilJoCopyright No. „ Shelf.:I>.3-^ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. « O—l TOPOORAPHIC MAP INDIANA DRAWN t^ CHA9R DRYER CONTOURS b^rLEVERETT Co^t-out inle.na roo r,,^ i STUDIES INDIANA GEOGRAPHY EDITED BY CHARLES REDWAY DRYER, M. A., M. D. Professor of GEOGR/iriiv in Tue Indiana State Normal School FIRST SERIES ^^.^^ A^ ^ A Terre Haute, Ind. THE INLAND P(;HLISHING COMPANY COPYRKIIIT, 1897 BY THE INLAND PUBLISHING COMPANY r^U 0- CO w Or TO WILLIAM MORRIS DAVIS I'KOFESSOR OF PHYSIC.U. (JEOCIRAPIIY IX HaRVARI) UXIVEKSITY, T(l M-IIOSE SlT.r.ESTIOS THIS AND SO MANY OTHER EKFORTS FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF CKOGRAPHIC TEACHING ARK DUE, THESE STUDIES ARE RfSI-ECTFUl-LV DElllCATED BY THE EDITOR TAl'.LE OF CONTENTS I. Tci Stuilints Mud Teachers 7 II. 'I'lic New (ieograiihy •' ClIAUI.KS 1!. DliVKU. III. The (ii'iuTal Geography of Indiana 17 Chari.k.s K. Dkyku. IV. The (ila.ial Deposits of Indiana 29 Fh.v.nk Lhvkuett. \'. Tile Eiic-\\'al)ash Itegion J'? Ch.\kles R. Dryeh. \'l. 'I'iic Morainic Lakes of Indiana 53 Charles R. Dryer. \'1I. The Natural Re.sources of Indiana (Jl Willis S. Blatchley. \III. in.liana: .V t'entury of Changes in the Aspects of Nature. . . 72 Amos W. Butler. IX. A Study of tlie City of Terre Haute S2 Charles R. Dryer. X. A 8hort History of the Great Lakes 90 Frank Bursley Taylor. LIST OF MAPS Topographic Map of Indiana Frontispiece Rainfall and Mean Temperature for iSOd 25 Resources and Population 26 Glacial Map of Indiana 28 Glacial Map of North America 33 The Erie- Wabash Region 42 Morainic Lakes of Indiana Placing page 53 Two Stages of the Earlier Glacial Lakes 98 and 99 Glacial Lakes Algonquin and Iroquois 103 The Nipissing Great Lakes and the Champlain Sea 107 I.— TO STUDENTS AND TEACHERS OF GEOGRAPHY To the student of scientific geography Indiana has been almost a sealed book. Very little of its area has ever been studied in the light of modern geographic science. The knowledge incidentally acquired l)y naturalists and geologists in the pro.sccution of their work is so scattered and buried in a mass of other material as to be unavailable. The paragraphs or chapters upon Indiana in the current text-l)Ooks of geography are, for the most i)art, meagre, empty and uninteresting. One of the very latest and best primary geographies tells the children that "Indiana is hilly in the southeast, the rest of the state is one vast rolling prairie." There is as much geography to the square mile in Indiana as in any other state, and to Indiana students and teachers it is far more important than Tiiibet or Central Africa. In an address before the National Geographic Society at Washington, February 3, 1893, upon the Improvement of Geographical Teaching, Professor William Morris Davis of Harvard University said: "The im- Iirovements needed in teaching geograpliy in our .schools involve a fuller investigation of the facts of the subject, a better knowledge of these facts by teachers, and a more .skillful use of them in the process of tcacliing. I may brielly state my belief that skillful teaching goes along closely with fulness of knowledge. The third need will therefore be largely cared for when the second is supplied; but lulness of knowledge cannot be expected ol" a teacher while her understanding of the geographical fea- tures of till' world ant forth the following thoughts concerning the new geography: 1. Its philosophy is not teleological, but evolutionary. It is no longer anthropocentric, but geocentric. 2. The new geography is scientific and rational. It studies not only facts (which are stupid things), but the relations between facts. 3. The new geography has been curidu'd liy the addition at the bottom G-2 16 STUDIES IX IXDIAXA GEOGRAPHY of the new science of geomorphology, and is thus brought into close alliance with geology. 4. The new geography forms a connected chain between the purely natural sciences and the humanities ; but being preponderatingly a natural science it must adopt the scientific or laboratory methods of study and teaching. 5. Thus the new geography becomes able to give, not only information, but scientific training ; the ability to discover facts and to see their relations. It converts geography from a lifeless bore to a living interest, from a dead grind to a delightful activity. It takes it out of the list of memory or "useful knowledge" studies, and plants it in the quickening current of modern scientific thought. 6. It is only when built upon "the solid ground of nature" and inspired liy the scientific spirit that geography can hope to solve the problem of Ritter and Buckle ; the problem of the relation of man to his physical environment, and thus, become in fact, the phy.^ical basis of histor}' and sociology. 7. Special means must be adopted to prepare teachers for this kind of work. On account of lack of special training and lack of facilities for obtaining it, educational progress in this direction will be slow ; but the new geography has come to stay, and teachers and school officers will do ■well to recognize and welcome it. III.— THE GENERAL GEOGRAPHY OF INDIANA chari.es k. pkykr Position .\xd Borxn.vKv Indiana i,s one of the North Central states, situated in what is some- times called the Middle West, Vjetween the iipi)er (ireat Lakes and the Ohio, and mostly in the Mississippi basin. The central parallel of the United States, the 39th, crosses its southern third and it is included be- tween 37° 41' and 41° 46' north latitude, and lietween 84° 44' and 88° 6' west longitude. It is bounded on the north by the parallel which is ten miles north of the southern extremity of Lake Michigan ; on the east by the meridian of the mouth of the Great Miami river; on the south by the Ohio; and on the west by the Wabash river and the meridian of Vincennes. Its extreme length is 2oO miles, its average width 145 miles, its area, 36,350 square miles. Elevation According to Powell's division of the United States into physiographic regions,* Indiana lies mostly on the Ice Plains, but includes a small portion of the Lake Plains on the north, and of the Alleghany Plateau on the southeast. The highest land in tlie state, in Southern Randolph county, is 1,285 feet above tide; the lowest, at the southwest corner, is 313 feet. The area above 1.000 feet comprises 2,850 square miles in three tracts: (1) an irregular area around the headwaters of the Whitewater river in Union, Wayne, Randolph, Delaware, Henry, Rush, Decatur, Franklin and Ripley counties; (2) a narrow crescentric rid,<;e in Brown county: (3) a considerable area in Steuben, DeKalb, Noble, and Lagrange counties. Isolated peaks rise in Brown county to 1,172 feet, and in Steuben to 1,200 feet. The area between 500 and 1.000 feet in ele- vation is 28,800 S([uare miles, and that below 500 feet is 4,700 sr|uare miles. The average elevation of the state is 700 feet. -Xtttional (Joognipliic Monographs, No. 3. 18 STUDIES IN INDIANA GEOGRAPHY Geological Stbi'Cture The rocks of Indiana are all sedimentary, and consist of a series of shales, sandstones and limestones laid down upon the bed of a shallow ocean off the shore of a land area which lay to the eastward. These strata are shown by borings to be more than 3,000 feet thick. They have never been compressed, folded or violently disturbed; but have been gently lifted into a very flat arch, the crest of which extends from Union county to Lake county. From the crest of the arch the strata dip gently to the northeast and southwest, the slope in the latter direc- tion being about twenty feet to the mile.* The oldest rocks exposed are the Hudson river shales, in the southeast; the youngest are the Carbon- iferous, along the west side. Physical History Indiana has been a land surface since the close of the coal period. Subjected during those millions of years to weather and stream erosion, it was maturely dissected into a complex network of valleys, inter-stream ridges, and isolated buttes. Over this surface the great Laurentide glacier repeatedly passed, extending once as far as the glacial boundary shown on the map, and again to the "Wisconsin" boundary. f Its effect was to grind down and smooth off the hills, to fill up the valleys, and to leave the surface plastered over with a great mass of loose material, much of which was brought from northern regions. Since the final disappear- ance of the ice the streams have partially cleared out a few of the old valleys and have begun to cut a system of new ones in the surface of the drift, but this cycle of erosion is still in its infancy. Thus, the greater part of Indiana is a plain of glacial accumulation, of very recent origin, and too young to have developed more than rudimentary features. Physiographic Regions The most striking physical contrast in Indiana is that between the glaciated and unglaciated areas. A comparison of the toi")Ographic map with that showing the revised glacial boundary brings out this contrast sharply. North of the limit of drift the contour linesj run in large ■•'■See the excellent sections of Professor Cubberly, showing the structural features of Indiana, in 18th Report of State Geologist, p. 219. t See Maps, pp. 2G, 28. X Contour lines are lines of equal elevation which run across the country, each everywhere at the same height above the sea. The shore of the ocean is the basal contour line, and if the sea level should rise a hundred feet it would mark a new contour line at that level. Where contour lines are far apart the slopes are gentle and the surface comparatively smooth ; where they are close together the slopes are steep and the surface rough and broken. The contour lines on the topographic map of Indiana are general and approximate only. Fuller and more accurate surveys are necessary lie- fore they can be drawn with exactness and detail. THE GENERAL GEOGRAPHY OF IXDIANA 19 curves ami are far apart, sliowing the general smoothness and monotony of the surface. South of the glacial boundary the lines are crowded and extremely tortuous, showing a surface much cut up. The limit of drift encloses and fits this area of broken surface as a man's coat iits his shoulders. The Ohio Slope. — That portion of the state which slopes directly to the Ohio, including the driftless area and the southeastern part of the drift plain, is a region of deep, narrow valleys, bounded by precipitous blufis, and sejjarated by sharp, irregular tlivides. Isolated knobs and buttes are numerous; the crests and summits are from -'iOO to .500 feet above the valley bottoms. The streams are rapid and broken by freijuent cataracts. All open out into the Ohio \'alley, a trench from one to six miles wide, 400 feet deep and bounded by steep blutfs. T/ie Central Plain. — North of an irregular line extending in a general direction from Richmond to Terre Haute, and south of the westward flowing portion of the Wabash from Fort Wayne to Attica, the topog- raphy is that of an almost featureless drift plain. It is traversed by numerous morainic ridges, but they are low and inconsi^icuous. The traveler may ride upon the railway train for hours without seeing a greater elevation than a hay stack or a pile of saw dust. The divides are flat and sometimes swampy, the streams muddy and sluggish. The valleys begin on the uplands as scarcely perceptible grooves in the com- pact boulder clay, widen much more rapidly than they deei)en. and seldom reach down to the rock floor. The Northern Plain. — The portion of the drift plain north of the Wabash river is more varied than the central plain, and comjirises several regions which differ niaterialh' in character. A small area around the head of Lake Michigan is occupied by sand ridges and dunes, partly due to a former extension of the lake and partly to present wind action. Some of the drifting dunes are more than 100 feet high. This region is separated by a belt of morainic hills from the ha>n:AX TESIl'KH.VTLRE TOR ISOli. 26 STUDIES IX INDIANA GEOCiRAPHY Resources Mineral. — As shown upon the map, an area in the southwestern part of the state, comprising 7,000 square miles, is underlain hj numerous seams of bituminous and block coal, which is mined to the extent of four million tons j-early. The natural gas field in the East Central part, an area of 2,500 square miles, turnishes gas to the value of $1,500,000 annually, which is used by numerous manufacturers in the field, and is piped to all the neighboring cities and to Chicago. Indiana is second only to Pennsylvania as a gas producing state. On the northern border of the gas field is a small but rich and growing petroleum field. A nar- KESOl'RCES AND POPULATION. THE GENERAL GEOGRAPIIY OF INDIANA 27 row belt extending tVoiii ^^^lsllington to Putnam county furnishes the best limestone in tlir \vc)rls and hills of the driftless area along the Ohio have been found favoraijle for the growing of apples, peaches, grapes and other fruits. The marshes of the Northern Plain, when properly drained, yield large crops of hay, corn and celery. Although among the states Indiana ranks thirty-fourth in area, she was in 1889 seventh in the production of cereals and of corn, and fourth in the production of wheat. Settlement .\xd Population Settlement from the Middle and Southern states began along the Ohio early in the present century and extended northward. Forty years later a stream of New England and New York people came into the northern l>art. The total population in 1890 was 2,192,404, of which only 18 per cent, live in cities, and less than seven per cent, are foreign-born — chieHy German. The map shows how closely the distribution of population corresponds to physical conditions, the areas of relatively spai-se popula- tion including (1) most of the driftless area and the rugged and broken region of the Ohio slope, except the coal fields and best fruit growing region; (2) the iirairies and marshes of the Kankakee basin, and (3) the roughest portion of the high moraine in the northeast. The influence of Chicago is shown in the northwest corner by the presence of a denser popu- lation in a region physically unfavorable. A closer analysis would proba- bly show an area of excess in the manufacturing districts of the gas field. IV.— THE GLACIAL DEPOSITS OF INDIANA =^= I'llANK I.KVKliKTT, F. U. S. A. UNITED STATER GEOLOGICAL SURVEY IXTRODrCTORY In Inilinna, the glacial deposits and scorings have been recognized from the earliest days of settlement; indeed, it is in this state that we find about the first recognition in America of the boulders as erratics and of striitt as products of ice action. So long ago as 1828, granite and other rocks of distant derivation were observed by geologists near New Harmony, in the southwestern part of the state. f At nearly as earlv a date (1842), striie were noted near Richmond, in the eastern part of the state.:,: Notwitlistanding the early date at which observations of glacial action began, very little attention was given to the drift, here or elsewhere, until within the past twenty years. It was commonly passed over in geological reports much as the soil is even to-day, with some casual re- mark concerning its presence in great or small amount. Within the past twenty years interest in these deposits, because ot the varied his- tory which they reveal, has been so aroused, that many geologists, both in America and Europe arc making a systematic study of them. In Indiana these dejiosits are engaging the attention of both the State and the United States Survey. The study of general features and a coiri- parative study of the drift of Indiana and neighboring states has been undertaken by the United States Survey, while the detailed examina- tion of tleposits has been entered upon by the State Survey. Professor T. C. Chamberlin has superintended the United States Survey work and has himself spent considerable time in Northern and Western Indiana. Under his direction Professor G. F. Wright and Professor .1. C". Branner, have investigated the glacial boundary; Professor L. C. Woostcr has studied the ilistrict north of the Kankakee, and the writer has made a 'Mule Conci-rning llif GInrial Bmindanj.—Tunhev study during thf SL'a.son o( 1.SB6 by Jlr. I.oveivtt nnil Messrs. Ashley and Siebcnthal of the Indiana Geological Survey has deterniiued the occurrence of glacial drift I's fur sf)uth as the revised line shown on nuip on page 20. tSee Geology of Indiunii, 1878, |i|i. 10.5-liHS. JSec Anier. Jour. Sei., Vol. XLIV, l!yl:!-:i, pp. 2>ii-.iii:!. 30 STUDIES IX INDIANA GEOGRAPHY reconnoissance of nearly all the drift-covered part of the state. Professor Wright's results have already been published in the United States Geological Survey bulletin, No. 58, issued in 1890. Professor Chamberlin's earlier results are set forth in his paper on the "Terminal Moraine," in the Third Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey for 1881-82. The later results of his studies and those of Professors Branner, Wooster and the writer, are largely unpublished. Through the courtesy of Professor Chamberlin the writer is permitted to .set forth some of the leading results in this paper. The work of the State Survey has not been uniform. Portions of it have been less detailed than that of the United States Survey, while other portions have been carried into greater detail. Probably the most detailed and careful study of any considerable area is that made by Dr. C. R. Drj'er in the northeastern part of the state.* An examination of the reports of the Indiana Geological Survey will serve to set forth these difterences and to show the importance of extending the detailed study of glacial deposits over all the glaciated portions of the state. Such a study probably can be carried on to the best advantage under the organization of a State Survey. But independent workers can do much to throw light on these deposits by collecting the records of well-borings and by careful notes taken at natural or artificial exposures. Befoi-e entering upon the discussion of the Indiana drift a few words of explanation seem necessary concerning the material of" the drift, and concerning the gathering grounds of the ice which overspread this region. Materials of the Drift It is quite a prevalent idea that the boulders which strew the surface of the glaciated districts and which have suffered transportation from distant regions, constitute the most impressive evidence of ice action. It seems by many not to be understood that the thick deposits of stony clay with associated beds of sand and gravel which blanket the North Central States to a dejith of 100, 200, and occasionally 500 feet, are also due to ice transportation. Over a large part of the country from the Dakotas eastward to the Appalachian ranges, these deposits are so tliick that ordinary wells fail to reach their bottom, and many of the valleys of the large streams are formed entirely in them. The boulders in real- ity constitute but an insignificant portion, for probably ninety-five per cent, of the drift of these states consists of minute rock fragments and sand and clay, and of the remaining five per cent, only a small part is made up of large blocks of distant derivation; i. e., of boulders proper. An examination of rocks in the drift mass will usually disclose a large jDercentage of material which has not been transported far, but there is ''See sixteenth, seventeenth and eigliteenth reports of State Geologist. THE GLACIAL DEPOSITS OF INDIANA 31 usually to be found a sprinkling of rocks from distant loialities. Ix't the reader select some space, say a scjuare yard, in a gravel jiit or other ex- posure and set about classifying the several kinds of rocks rejjresented, and he will ascertain the relative amount of local and distant material. In its bedding the drift displays great irregularity. In general, it con- sists of a confused mass of angular, semi-angular, and well-rounded stones imbedded in a matrix of sandy clay. This confused mass was named till by Scottish geologists, and this term has been adopted by American geologists. By some it is called boulder clay, because of its containing boulders. With the till one can lind, in many exposures, beds or pockets of sand and gravel. These beds in some cases comprise the entire section, but they are usually subordinate to the till. In some parts of the glaciated districts the till ('onstitutes the lower part of the drift, while the sand and gravel lie mainly near the surface. In Indiana such a relationship does not prevail over wide areas. The drift dei)osits of this state are unusually varied in the arrangements of till sheets, gravel beds and sand beds; what is true of one township may find no application in a neighboring one. Farther on we shall discuss the evidence upon which is based the con- clusion that there are in Indiana drift-sheets differing widely in age. GL.A.riATED RoCK SURFACES Tlu' peculiar appearances i)resented by rock surfaces which have been abraded by the ice-sheet are usually of such a striking nature as to arrest the attention of untrained as well as of trained observers. These surfaces differ somewhat fron) place to place but still have a characteristi*; appear- ance. They present, usually, a series of parallel, or but slightly divergent lines or grooves, varying in size from faint scratches as fine as a hair, to broad, shallow grooves an inch or two, and occasionally .several inches in width. Uetween the grooves the rock has usually been scoured down to a plane surface. The stria' indicate, as a rule, the general course of ice-movement and with few exceptions point toward the margin presented l)y the ice-sheet at the time they were formed. As the ice-sheet was subject at times to excessive wastage, if not to com- plete destruction, followed by readvance in which some shifting of move- ment occurred, we find the stria> showing some interesting variations in neighboring localities. Some of the best illustrations in America are to be found in Western Indiana and these arc discussed farther on. The Glacial Gatuekinu Grounds On the glacial maj) of North America are shown the extent of glacia- tioii, and the several main centers of dispersion; viz., the Cordilleran, Keewatin, Labrador and (Greenland. The glaciated districts in North G— 3 1 :!2 STUDIES IN INDIANA GEOGRAPHY America are estimated to cover 4,000,000 square miles. It is doubtful, howev.er, if this entire area was covered by the ice-sheet at any one time. Dr. G. M. Dawson, director of the Canadian Geological Survey, has found evidence that the Cordilleran ice-field overspread the Rocky Mountains and extended some distance to the east and then withdrew before the Keewatin ice-sheet had reached that region.* Similarly the Keewatin ice-sheet culminated and withdrew from its southern limits (in Missouri and Iowa) before the Labrador ice-field had reached its extreme western limits. The writer has found that the Lab- rador movement extended into Southeastern Iowa at a date considerably later than the time when the Keewatin ice-sheet withdrew ; there being a soil and other evidences of an interval found on the surface of the Kee- watin drift and under the drift of the Labrador sheet. It should be understood, however, that the reduction in size of the Cordilleran and Keewatin sheets at the time of the culmination of the Labrador sheet, may ha\e amounted to but a small percentage of the area which they had covered. Greenland is now ice-covered while districts to the west which have been ice-covered are nearly free from glaciers. The continuation of gla- ciation there parallels the observations in the fields to the wpst and adds to the weight of these observations in indicating a progressive culmina- tion of the ice-sheet from west to east. Aside from the four main gathering grounds there appear to have been minor gathering grounds in the extreme east on New Brunswick and on Nova Scotia as indicated by Mr. Robert Chalmers in his paper in the Annual Report of the Canadian Survey for 1894. There were also small ice-fields on the Rocky and Sierra Nevada Mountains in the West- ern United States, as described many years ago by King, Whitney and others. The Glacial Succession in Indiana Fird Ice Invasion. — This state was invaded by ice which had as its cen- ter of disi^ersion the elevated districts to the east and south of Hudson Baj\ There was a movement from the region north of Lake Huron in a course west of south over the Lake Michigan basin, Illinois and Western Indiana. There was also a southward movement from the same region across Lakes Huron and Erie, Western Ohio and Eastern Indiana. It is not known w'hether these movements were independent and of different dates or whether there was simply a radiation in movement of a single ice accumulation. It should not be taken for granted that even within the state of Indiana the ice-sheet was occupying the glacial boundary comijletely at any one time. *BuUetiu of the Gcol. Soe'y of .America, Vol. VII, pp. lil-iiii, November, 18ii.5. 34 STUDIES IN INDIANA GEOGRAPHY The ice depos^ited but little drift near its extreme limits, either in In- diana or tlie states to the west. There is not, as a rule, a well defined ridge or thick belt of drift along the glacial boundary, such as character- izes the southern limit of some of the later drift-sheets, though occasional ridging of drift is to be seen, as in Chestnut Ridge in Jackson county* and a similar ridge in Southern Morgan county. The boundary of the drift in Indiana is usually so vague and ill defined that it is only ap- proximately known. If we may judge of the deposit over the state from the outlying por- tions, south of deposits made by later invasions, the deposits of the first invasion are of much less volume than those of later invasions. They appear to include not more than 30 of the 130 feet which the writer estimates the state to carry. In the portion of the state which was glaciated l:)ut once the thickness is usually less than 25 feet, but filled valleys will probably give it an average somewhat above that amount. What is true of the drift of the earliest invasion in Southern Indiana is true also of the same drift of Southern Illinois and Southwestern Ohio. This invasion seems, therefore, to be quite widely characterized by a lighter deposition than that of the later invasions. First Interglacial Interval. — After reaching the line marked by the glacial boundary, the ice melted away and left the drift exposed to atmospheric agencies. How far to the north the land Ix'came uncovered is not known. At this time a black soil was formed, which is now concealed benca,th deposits of silt, termed loess, in Southern Indiana, and beneath later deposits of till in the northern portion of the state. This soil is found at the base of the loess at various points over the southern portions of the state, but is best developed on flat tracts. It may be seen beneath the loess in the flat districts east and south of Terre Haute at a depth of from six to eight feet. The vegetaljle matter appears to have accuuiulated there just as it does on the present surface of poorly drained tracts in northern latitudes, where decay is slower than accumulation. In West- ern Indiana, from Parke and Vermillion counties northward, the soil is found below a later sheet of till at depths varying from twenty feet up to one hundred feet or more. Numerous references to the soil below till in this portion of the state are to be found in the "Indiana Geological Reports." it has not been observed in Eastern Indiana, so far as the writer is aware, but may be present, for few valleys there reach low enough to expose it. It seems not to be so conspicuous, however, as in Western Indiana, other- wise it would have been brought to notice in well-borings. No conclusions have been reached concerning the length of time in- volved in the formation of this soil. The land at that time seems to have been so low or so flat in Indiana, that drainage lines were not well *Geologyof Indiana, 1S71, pp. 5ii-57. T!1K (IT.ACIAL liKPOSITS OF INDIANA 35 dovoloped in tlio diil't suil'iicc, anil we arc thus (k'ju-ived of one iMi])or- tant means of estimating the work accomplished. Main Tjoc.lied to deposits of this cliaracter on the Rhine, which have very extensive development in the fierman lowlands and bordering ilistriets in Xorthern Europe. Mieroscojiical analysis shows it to consist princijially of (piartz grains, but it usually has a variety of other minerals such as occur in the glacial dril't. It is apparently de- rived from the drift, either by the action of water or wind. In many places, especially on the borders of the large valleys, the loe.ss is charged with calcareous matter which iiartially cements it. When excavations are made in it the banks will stand for years, and will retain inseri])tions nearly as well as the more consolidated rock formations. It has a strong tendency to vertical cleavage, and usually presents nearly perpendicular banks on the borders of streams which erode it. It often contains con- cretions or irregular nodules of lime and of iron and manganese oxides. It is also often highly fossiliferous. The fo.ssils are usually land and fresh-water mollusks, but occasionally insects and bones of mammals are founil. The deposit appears to be mainly of one stage in the glacial ]ieriod, and has been delinitely correlated l)y Mr. W. .1. McGee with an ice in- vasion which followed the interglacial stage just discussed.* In the region which Mr. McGee studied, in Northeastern Iowa, it connects on the north with a sheet of till called by him the upper till, and afterwards named by Profes-sor Chambcrlin, the lowan Drift-Sheet. The writer has visited that region and fullj' concure with Mr. McGee's opinion. This drift-sheet has not been recognized in Indiana, for if present it lies entirely within the limits of a later invasion and the later deposits have concealed it. There is, in Western Indiana along the Waliash, a loess of more recent date than the main deposit, but it is contined to low altitudes, seldom ap- pearing more than one hundred feet above the river level. In Western Illinois, a loess has been found which is older than the main deposits, but it has been seen in only a few places and is a{)parcntly a thin and patchy deposit. It is thought by Professor Salisbury that the loess of the lower ;Mississi])pi was deposited at two distinct stages. Loess is, therefore, a deposit which, like sand or gravel, may l)e laid down when- ever conditions are favorable, but tlie great bulk of it having been dc- I)osited at a definite stage of the glacial period, it seems proper to refer to that stage as the Loess stage. "ElcVLMilh Animiil Report, U. S. Oeol. Sun'cy, 1889-90, pp. 4,'»-471. 3f) STUDIES IN INDIANA GEOGRAPHY In Soiithoni Indiana, and in bordering portions of Southern Ohio and Soutliern Illinois, there is a continuous sheet of pale silt locally termed " white clay," which is thought to be a phase of the loess, though more clayey and less uniform in texture than typical loess. It covers the interfluvial tracts as far north as the limits of a later sheet of drift, and has been discovered at a few places beneath that later drift. It probably extended much farther north than its present exposed limits, for the ice- sheet appears to have receded far to the North at tlie maii\ loess deposit- ing stage, thus leaving the surface free to receive these deposits. The northern limit of the exposed portion in Indiana is marked by the " Wisconsin boundary," shown on the Glacial Map of Indiana. This deposit is usually but a few feet in thickness, seldom exceeding eight feet. Along the Waljash, however, where it becomes a typical loess it often reaches a thickness of twenty to twenty-five feet. It may he readily distinguished from the underlying till both by texture and color. It contains only very minute rock fragments, while tlie till is thickly set with stones of all sizes. In color it is a paler yellow than the till. There is usuall}', also, a weathered zone at the top of the till and some- times a black soil, making still more clear the line of contact. Tlie loess and its associated silts is found at all altitudes in Southern Indiana; from the low tracts near the Wabash, scsircely 400 feet A. T., up to the most elevated tracts in Southeastern Indiana, which in places exceed 1,000 feet A. T. The great range in altitude is one of the most puzzling features of the loess. The same perplexing distribution is found in Europe as in America. As yet no satisfactory solution for the prolilem of its deposition at such widely different altitudes has been found. Tiiterijlnclal Stage FoUmnng the Loess Deposition. — Between the main de- position of loess and the invasion of Northern Indiana by a later ice- sheet, considerable time elapsed ; for we find that the drainage lines have reached a much more advanced stage on the loess-covered districts south of the deposits of the later ice-sheets than they have upon those deposits. It is found that large valleys had been opened in the loess and the underlying drift Ijefore the streams from the later ice-sheet brought their deposits into the valleys. This interval of valley-erosion is thought by several who have had opportunity to study it, including the present writer, to Ije longer than the time which has elajjsed since the ice-sheet last occupied Northern Indiana. The question has been raised, whether the greater amount of erosion outside the later drift may not have been due to streams of large vol- ume which accompanied the later ice invasion. That this is only a minor influence, is shown by the fact that valleys in Southern Illinois TIIK (JLACIAL DEPOSITS OF INDIANA 37 whicli Ho cnliivly outsi.K' the ivach of .such waters are much larger than valleys of similar drainage areas within the limits of the later drift-sheet. It cannot be urged that the region with the smaller valleys is less favored by slopes or stream gradients than the region with well-developed valleys, for the reverse is the case. There are large areas within the loess-covered districts which do not possess the reliefs and other con- ditions favorable for the rapid development of drainage lines which appear in much of the newer drift. In short, there appears no escape from the view, that the interval between the loess deposition and the later ice invasion was a long one. T/ir U'!.- being deter- mined l>y the concealment of the loess beneath a thin sheet of bouldery drift. From the east border of East White river a few miles below Columbus, northeastward to Whitewater valley at Alpine in Southern Favette county, there is a sharjily defined ridge of drift standing twenty to "forty feet above outer border tracts. Upon cro.ssing Wiiitewater, where the border leads southeastward, it is not so well defined as west of the river, though there is usually a ridge about twenty feet in height. Although not conspicuous in Indiana by its relief, this border is about as clearly defined as anywhere in the United States. Within tlie space of a half dozen steps one will pass from loess-covered tracts of 38 STUDIES IN INDIANA GEOGRAPHY earlier drift to the lioulderj- drift of this later invasion. Accompanying the change from loess to bouldery drift, tliere is a change in the color of the soil from a pale yellowish or ashy color to a rich black. This line is one of great agricultural importance. The district lying to the north is finely adapted to corn and timothy, while that to the south seems poorly adapted to these crops. The southern district when uncultivated soon becomes thickly covered with briers, a feature which is not common on the black soil of the Irouldery drift. In this connection we would remark, that while the loess has usually great fertility, the compact loess of Southeastern Indiana is adapted only to certain products. It seems as well adapted to wheat, orchards, and small fruits as the Idack soil, and there appears to be an appreciation on the part of the i-esidents of this restricted adaptability. Between the time when the ice-sheet stood at the line just discussed, and the final disappearance of the ice from Indiana, several moraines were formed. The best defined ones are indicated on the accomjianying State map. In a few places not indicated on the map, weak morainic lines have been observed bi;t their courses and connections have not been fully determined. These moraines indicate considerable complexity of movement, it will be observed that several moraines lead eastward from Illinois into Warren and Benton counties Indiana, and that their eastern ends are crossed by weaker morainic belts carrying many lioulders. These features appear to indicate that after the former moraines had been made and the ice had retreated some distance northward, there was a readvance of ice from the northeast to the line marked by the outer boulder belts. It is as yet undecided whether much of an interval of deglaciation preceded this advance, Imt there was apparently a great shifting of ice-movement. The prominent moraines which are overridden in Benton and Warren counties may find a continuation eastward in a belt of very thick drift which crosses Central Indiana from Benton county eastward, but which has not the definite ridges which are to be seen from Benton county westward. This belt of thick drift in Indiana is fifteen to thirty miles wide, and has a thickness perhaps three times as great as the general thickness of drift in bordering districts north and south of it. The aver- age thickness is fully 200 feet. It leads south of east across Tippecanoe and Clinton counties to Western Tipton county where it turns abruptlj' southward through Eastern Boone and Western Hamilton counties and Marion count}% coming to White river in the vicinity of Indianapolis. It there turns eastward and passes through Hancock, Henry and North- ern Wayne and Southern Randolph counties into Ohio. The belt of thick drift was apparently overridden by the later advance. The weak moraines and boulder belts of the later advance cross it obliquely in a THE GLACIAL DEPOSITS OF INDIANA 39 northwest to southeast course in Western Indiana, ami return in a north- eastward course to it in Henry, Wayne, and Randolpli counties. This later advance ajiparently extended as far southwest as the boul- dery moraine of Central Hendricks couuty and the houldery niorainic tracts of Southern Johnson and Southern Shelby counties. Its north- west limits were perhaps at the curvinears to have shrunk on all sides until its limits on tiie northwest were at the moraine which lies along the north side of the Wabash in the vicinity of Logans- port, and at the southwest were near the dotted line indicated on the Indiana map, leading from White county southeast to the vicinity of Inilianapolis. It is in the district southwest of the latter line that feeble moraines and patches of boulders are found crossinii over the great belt of drift in oblique courses. From near Indianapolis, the line marking this later position of the last invasion, as shown on the map, leads east- ward to the strong belt in Southeastern Delaware county. There appears to have been at the stage just outlined, a lake bordering the ice on the northwest in which the deposits of sand were made which form such a conspicuous feature in Northwestern Indiana from Cass and White counties northwestward to the moraine north of the Kankakee. It seems probalile that the eastern and northern, as well as the south- eastern limits of this lake were determined by the ice, for we find that the sandy districts terminate at moraines on these borders. The moraine leading northward from Northern Fulton county through Western Marshall and St. Joseph counties, would in that case, be about contemporaneous with the moraine on the north side of the Wabash in Southwestern Fulton, :Miami, Cass, Carroll and White counties, and both would be of about the same date as the strong moraine lying north of the Kankakee. These correlations are not, however, fully established and should be taken simjjly as a working hypothesis to be tested by future developments in the study of that region. In Northeastern Indiana, moraines appear along the north border of the Mississinewa, Salamonie, Wabash and St. Mary's rivers, which were apparently formed in succession as the ice was wasting away after its last advance. These moraines are traceable eastward across Northern Ohio and northeastward into Southeastern IMichigan and mark successive limits of a lobe of ice which flowed southwestward across the Erie and Maumee basins. This ice-lobe appears to have pereisted at the line of the outer of these four belts to a date when there was open country on the northwest, for the drainage lines lead from this mt)rainic belt northwest to the St. Joseph river, passing across the moraines of the intervening 40 STUDIES IN INDIANA GEOGRAPHY district, as they would scarcely have done had the ice persisted there as long as in the Erie lobe.* Having traced the ice-sheet to its final disappearance from Indiana, the reader ma}' find in Mr. Taylor's "History of the Great Lakes" f a contin- uation of the events incident to the retreat of the ice toward Labrador. Succession of Ice Invasions Shown by Drift Deposits The evidence of difference in the age of the drift, shown by erosion of its surfoce, has been discussed. Other lines of evidence of successive in- vasions have been recognized. One of the most interesting and signifi- cant is the presence, in a vertical section, of sheets of drift showing difler- ences of age and of derivation. Such sections are occasionally seen along streams, and are frequently brought to light by wells. Professor Cham- berlin has presented as the frontispiece illustration in Geikie's last edition of " The Great Ice Age," such a section found on Stone creek near Will- iamsport in Warren county, Indiana. There is exposed at the base, a reddish till of the earliest drift upon which there rests a bed of old fer- ruginous gravel. This gravel is overlain by a fresh blue till, which is apparently of the age of the moraines which lead into that county from the west. Above this till is another gravel bed much fresher than the one below. Above the gravel is a gray till, which was apparently depos- ited by the ice at the time w'hen it fronted southwest, and had its ter- minus at the boulder belt which crosses Warren county from north to south just west of the place where this section is exposed. Succession of Ice Invasions Shown by Stride The stria3 of Western Indiana, as may be seen by the maps, are widely different in their bearings. Until the several ice invasions had been rec- ognized they were a puzzling feature ; but they are now found to support the other lines of evidence of such invasions. Perhaps the best illustra- tion is to be found near Williamsport. There are found in this village two sets of striaa ; one bearing southeast and belonging apparently to the earliest invasion; another bearing southward and belonging apparently to the same invasion which formed the bulky moraines in that vicinity. Two miles east of Williamsport, on the north side of the Wabash, Pro- fessor Chamberlin found a third set of stria;, with westward bearing, which apparently pertain to the last invasion of the ice. At Monon and near Kentland, strite of two distinct sets appear. The latest bear westward and belong, apparently, to the last ice invasion. The date of the earlier, southward-bearing striic, is as yet undetermined. Thickness of the Drift There are surprising differences in the thickness of the drift within "See 18th Report lud. State Geologist, pp. 29, 89. t See page 90. THE GLACIAT. DEPOSITS OF INDIANA 41 tlie stati'. Tlie jjortion of Iho ulder drift oxposeil to view lia.s, :is already noted, an average thickness of about thirty feet. The additional 100 feet of the newer drift is, however, deposited very irregularly. In the belt of thick drift which leads from Benton countv .southea.st to Marion county, and tluMicc east into Ohio, the thickness is probably 200 feet. The portion of the newer drift area to the south of this belt has an aver- age of about fifty to seventy-five feet. A still larger tract extending north from this belt-of thick drift as far as Allen county and the west- llowing ])ortion of the Wabash, has only fifty to seventy-five feet with limited areas where its thickness is but twenty to thirty feet. In North- w-estern White, Southwestern Pulaski, and Southern Jasper counties there are several townships in which scarcely any drift appears except- ing boulders and sandy deposits. In Northern Indiana the drift is very thick. Its average thickness for fifty miles south of the north boundary (if the state is probably not less than 250 feet, and may exceed 300 feet. At Kcndallville it is 485 feet, and at several cities on the moraine which leads northeast from Fulton county to Steuben county, its thickness has been shown by gas borings to exceed 300 feet. The rock is seldom reached in that region at less than 200 feet. Were the drift to be stripjied from the northern portion of Indiana its altitude would be about as low as the surface of Lake Michigan, though much of the present sur- face is 200 to 300 feet above the lake. W— THE ERIE-WABASH REGION (liARLKS R. DRYKR Thu Erie-Wabash Region is a broad, shallow trough extending from the west end of Lake Erie southwest ward across Ohio to Central Indiana. An inspection of the aeconiitanying map will show tliat it is bounded on the south by the divide between the tributaries of the Ohio and tliose of the Maumee and Wabash, and on the northwest by a belt of hills fcjrin- ing in part the divide between the Maumee and Wabash drainage and that of Lake Michigan. From Lake Erie the valley bottom rises about 200 feet in 100 miles to a summit near Fort Wayne, and then declines westward, reaching again the level of Lake Erie near Logansport, a dis- tance of sixty miles. The elevation of the southern rim lies mostly between 400 and 500 feet above Lake Erie, while its northern rim rises to an equal height in the hills of Northeastern Indiana. Its width from north to south is a little over 100 miles. This region presents some unique and anomalous features, and exhibits a continuity and uniform- ity of structure which mark it as an interesting physical unit, its pecu- liarities are most clearly revealed by its drainage. Drainage An inspection of the map shows that the axis of the trough is travereed by one uninterrupted river channel, o(cui)ied, however, by different streams; from Lake Erie to Fort Wayne l\y the Maumee, thence for about ten miles Ijy a marsh (now drained), thence by the Little Wabash to the main Wabash, and thence by the latter river. Down the sides of the trough flow eight streams of considerable size, four of them arranged opposite each other in pairs — the Blanchard-Auglaize and theTillin, the St. Mary's and the St. Joseph. The series on the south is continued at regular intervals by the upper Wabash (above Huntington), the Sala- monie and the Mississinewa; but on the north the divide is too near to permit the presence of any large stream except the EeJ, which flows more nearly parallel with the axial stream. The drainage system as a whole is almost sagittate, like an unsym metrical spear-head with five barbs. Tlie general cour.-ottoni is one of the most diffi- cult areas in America to drain. Surface and Soil We are now prei)ared to account for the variety of surface and soil found in the Erie-Wabash region. Underneath it all is the ground imraine of rather stiff gravelly clay, similar to the general mass of the drift sheet, and forming the surface soil over the greater part of the area. Piled upon this are the terminal moraines, largely composed of the same materials but containing, locally, great heaps and masses of sand and gravel. Out of this the glacial and present streams have washed much of the finer material and deposited it in the old valleys and intermorainic intervals, some of which are nearly filled up; as, along the upper Pigeon river. Cedar creek and the head of Eel river. Innumerable hollows and depressions which at first contained shallow lakes, have been filled with vegetable growth and converted into marshes, or if sufficiently drained, muck lands, rich for grass and corn. The bottom of the glacial Maumee lake is an exceedingly fine tough clay to which, in many places, the growth and decay of vegetation have added improved qualities. CfLTURE The whole region was originally covered with a heavy growth of hard- wood forest, except the marshes, or so-called "wet prairies," and a few small tracts of genuine dry prairie in the northwest. No equal area has furnished more valuable timber, oak, walnut, beech, maple, ash, elm, sycamore, poplar, hickory, locust, cherry and others. For unknown centuries before the advent of the white man, the Indian hunted in the forests and fished in the lakes. The Maumee- ^\'abash was an important route of canoe travel between the CJreat Lakes and the Ohio. The carry or portage from the head of the Maumee over to the little stream which now occupies the Erie- Wabash channel, was short and easy, and in 1680 LaSalle found there an Indian village and a fur-trading post. Here was a favorite congregating i)lace for men, savage and civilized, at the forks of four water-ways, and the spot was naturally jjredestined to be the site of an imjiortant town. It has j>assed through all the regular stages characteristic of so many American towns, Indian village and portage, trading post, military fort, modern city. It was as easy a route for the canal boat as for the canoe, and as early as 1834 the Wabash and Erie canal was constructed through it, having its summit level in the Steu\3enCo.,l\\(i. St■e^v\>eL•\\Co.,l^^(^.. UaUWxvVe */.,.'» IJIIIWIBJIJ ,,.111)111^1, >W*P VI.— THE MORAINIC LAKES OF INDIANA CHARLES R. DRYER An intelligent young man onc-e told the writer that he had taught school in Indiana ten^vears witliout knowing tliat there was a lake in the state, vet his pupils probably learned something about Titicaca and Tanganyika. This is a not unusual case of the prevalent love of the re- mote which afflicts the teaching of geography. That there may be fewer such teachers and pupils in the future, is one of the objects of this paper. DlSTRIBfTIOX Nearly every map of Indiana shows some of the lakes but none gives an adequate idea of their number. They are most numerous in two belts; one extending from Steuben county to Fulton, the other from St. Joseph to Lake. An examination of the glacial map of Indiana* shows that these lake belts coincide with the great interlobate moraines formed between the Michigan, Saginaw and Erie ice lobes. There are very few lakes outside the area of influence of the Saginaw ice. The Indiana lakes are a part of the great morainic lake belt which extends from Cape Cod to Dakota, and in no portion of that belt are the lakes more numerous and characteristic. Steuben county, alone, contains more than one hun- dred, and the whole number in the state cannot be less than one thousand. Classification Glacial lakes are of two classes: (1) rock ba.iim, formed wholly ijr par- tially by glacial erosion; (2) drift basim, formed by the irregular deposit of drift. The former are very numerous in Canada, New England, Scot- land, Sweden, Finland and regions of ice accumulation generally. The latter are characteristic of regions of ice destruction and drift dei)Osition, as the North Central States, and North Germany and Russia. No glacial rock basin occurs in Indiana, and under the most of our lakes the drift is probably not less than one hundred feet deep. They all belong to the class which Davist has called lakes of obstruction, as distinguished from basins formed by construction or destruction. In general, they may be said to be due to the irregular deposit of glacial drift: the liollows or »Sce page 28. tProteedings Bostoa Society of Natural History. VoL XXI.. p. 31-'j. 54 STUDIES IN INDIANA GEOGRAPHY basins being the counterparts and complements of the hills and knobs characteristic of terminal moraines. Penck* divides morainic lakes into, three classes: (1) Round, cauldron-shaped basins, known in this country as kettle-holes, or " potash kettles,"' many of which are dry. (2) Long, narrow channels containing shallows and deeps like the beds of rivers, which they evidently once were. (3) Basins which are branched, lobed or otherwise irregular, often extremely so, and whose bottom topograph\^ is undulating like the sur- face of the land around them. To these might be added basins of complex origin which combine some of the characters of the three classes. Size Morainic lakes are always small, the area of the majority being less than one-fourth of a square mile. The largest in Indiana has an area of a little over five and one-half square miles, while the Mauersee, in East Prussia has an erea of thirty-five square miles, divided, however, into six basins, and a maximum depth of 12.5 feet. The depth varies from a few feet to a little over 100 feet, which, in some small lakes, makes the slope about as steep as the material will lie. Kettle-Hole Lakes One of the finest specimens of a lake with a single, symmetrical, kettle- shaped basin is Gage lake in Mill Grove township, Steuben county. (See map.) It is about one mile by three quarters in diameter, and surrounded by high sand bluffs. The slope of the bottom is quite uniform from every side, and a large area in the center is over fifty feet in depth, with a maximum of seventy feet. Clear or Pretty lake, in Milford township, Lagrange county, is about the same size as Gage, and its basin, nearly circular in outline, forms a perfect w'ashbowl eighty feet deep in the center, gradually shallowing to al>out sixty feet towards the shore in all directions, then rising rapidly to a wide, shallow rim all around. Blue River lake, in Smith township, Whitley county, Ijelongs to the same class but is larger and less deep. Clear lake in Clear Lake township, Steuben county, is a double, or perhaps triple kettle-hole, divided by a ridge which rises to six feet below the surface. (See map.) Its area is 1.18 square miles. The south basin is regular in outline, a mile and a quarter long by half a mile wide. There is a coast shelf of shallow water, from which the bottom falls away rapidly, the slope being in several places as much as one foot in two, or at an angle of more than twenty degrees. At one place the depth increases in ten boat-lengths from six, to ninety feet. A large portion of the central area is below sixty feet, and the line of greatest depth =-'-Morphologie tier Erdoberfljiche, IL, 26.5. THE MORAIXIC LAKES OF INDIANA 55 varies between seventy ami oni' huinlred feet. The water is very clear, and rejxirted by divers to l)e very cold in some places at the bottom. Over these areas ice seldom forms, and they probal>ly indicate the position of copious sub-lacustrine springs. To this class also belongs some menij bers of an interesting group of lakes in .Johnson township, Lagrange county. Two of the group, Atwood and Witmer, are situated within a terminal moraine of the Saginaw glacier, and are surrounded by high hills, but are quite shallow. The others are in a level intermorainic interval. Third lake is an irregular hole of perhaps 300 acres in the midst of an extensive marsh. A depth of ninety-six feet was found within twenty rods of the inlet, and no water beyond was found less than seventy-five feet deep. Oliver and Olin lakes, about GOO acres in area, lie in the same level interval, but not in a marsh. As far as sounded, they proved to have a ijuite uniform depth of from sixty to eighty feet. These deep, abrupt and smooth-bottomed basins, not among the hills, but sunk into the level surface of the ground moraine, upset the supposed rule that lakes with low shores are shallow. Examples of kettle-liole lakes might be cited indefinitely. They are of all sizes, from a mere pool up to one or two square miles. Dry kettle- holes far outnumber the lakes, and are of all dimensions, from a mere dimple, saucer or soap-dish to a great cauldron or funnel. The writer has seen in Western New York, near the summit of a morainic gravel hill, a perfect funnel about two acres in area at the top and tapering downwards 100 feet to a sharp point. On account of the porous nature of the soil it never retains, even temporarily, a pool of water. If a ket- tle-hole sinks into the clayey ground moraine or is lined with an im- permeable clay deposit, as a cistern is lined with mortar, it will usually be filled with water up to the level of the lowest point in its rim, and if the rain-fall exceeds evaporation, will have an outlet. If it sinks into sand or gravel below the level of permanent ground water, it is like a well, and will hold water up to that level, but will not overflow. The celebrated and marvelously beautiful Walden Pond in Concord, Massa- chusetts, rendered famous l)y Thorcau and Emerson, is a kettle-hole lake in a glacial sand plain, sixty-tive acres in area, 100 feet deep, ami with- out visible inlet or outlet. Origin. — The precise mode of formation of kettle-holes was for a long time a puzzle, until observations of existing glaciers revealed the process. During a period of glacial retreat the ice near the margin is stagnant and covered with debris to a considerable depth. Large masses of ice become detached from the main ma.ss and, buried in drift, are left to melt. As they slowly disappear, the drift material caves in over the vacant space and only a hole remains, its depth, dimensions and slope depending upon the thickness and breadth of the ice block, and the character and quantity of the moraine material. Kettle-holes, both dry and water- 56 STUDIES IN INDIANA GEOGRAPHY holding, are among the most characteristic and easily recognized features of terminal moraines. Channel Lakes Terminal moraines contain many long, narrow lakes, which occupy valleys generally much too large for them, and have uneven bottoms with alternating deeps and shallows like old river-l^eds. During the re- cession of a glacier large volumes of water flow away from the ice front and carve deep channels for themselves in the loose moraine material. After the disappearance of the ice these channels are abandoned, or, being supplied only liy rainfall, the volume of the stream is greatly diminished. They partially fill up with sediment, and come to be occupied b)' marshes or shallow lakes, threaded and connected by an in- significant stream. As has been elsewhere noted,* the Saginaw ice lobe withdrew from Indiana while the Erie lobe still occupied the northeast- ern portion in considerable strength ; and the wiiole northwestern slope of the joint interlobate moraine in Bteuben and Noble counties is fur- rowed with glacial drainage channels. In Steuben county several transverse valleys cut entirely through this moraine and carrj' water from the interval on the Erie side into the Lake Michigan basin. They are a half mile to a mile in width and 150 feet deep, and each contains a chain of lakes strung upon the thread of a small stream. The larger lakes of these chains are mostly of comjilex structure and origin, but many of them are typical channel lakes. The long, shallow arm or neck of Crooked lake in Pleasant township (see map) is a per- fect example of this kind. Long and Golden lakes of the Pigeon river chain in Steuljen township are each more than a mile long and scarcely one-fourth of a mile wide, with a middle depth varying from twenty-five to forty feet. From Hogback lake, the next below in this chain, a sim- ilar valley trends northward five miles to Gage lake of the Concord creek chain. This, too, was once an important drainage line, but a num- ber of sand and gravel ridges a few rods wide and thirty feet high, re- sembling a railroad embankment or fill, have been in some way thrown across the valley, and ponded between them are half a dozen shallow pools without outlet. A similar phenomenon is ])resented by tlie valley of Long lakes in York township. Noble county. Long lake in Milford township, Lagrange county, two miles long and nearly half a mile wide^ probably belongs to this class, but is of unusual depth — forty-five to eighty feet. Shriner's and Cedar lakes in Thorn Creek township, Whitley county, occupy two narrow, parallel valleys, separated by a ridge scarcely a quarter of a mile wide. Shriner's is straight and symmetrical, one mile by one-fourth, its middle depth increa.«ing from forty feet at the "See page 49. THK MOUAIXIC LAKES OF INDIANA 57 foot to over seventy near the head. Cedar is niueli more irregular in outline and bottom, and is divided l)y shallows into two basins, of wiiich tlie upper is n(>arly eighty feet deep. Round lake, 100 acres in area, and 1)0 feet deep, eonneeted with Cedar by a narrow channel and at tlie same water level, is probably a kettle-hole. InRi:r,ii..\i{ Lakes Lakes of lobed, irregular and complex form and outline, are numerous. They may have been formed simply by the irregular, tumultuous dump- ing or heaping up of drift, but many are probably of complex origin, in- cluding within one connected area kettle-holes, old river channels and basins due neither to the melting of detached ice blocks, nor to stream erosion. No better example exists in the world than .James lake, in Pleasant and Jamestown townships, Steuben county. (See map.) It consists of five distinct basins, with a total length of five miles and an area of 2.21 square miles. The southern and largest basin is one mile by a mile and a ([uarter, Avith very irregular shores and bottom. Three small islands stud its surface, and at another point :i mound in the bottom rises to within eight feet of the surface. The depths between vary from thirty to sixty-five feet. Upon the east side the shores are abrupt, and the hills rise steeply to a height of one hundred to two hundred feet. Bold promon- toi-ies, sequestered coves and precipitous bluffs give it a highly picturesque character. The second basin is more regular, with a length of one mile and a maximum width of half a mile. The east shore continues to be high and steep, and only a few rods from it sixty feet of water can be found. The maxinium depth is eighty feet. Northward it narrows to a strait with only two leet of water, opening into the third basin, which in shape, size and depth, closely resembles the second basin. Eagle island, a high peak rising abruptly from the water near the north end, is now joined to the mainland by a marsh. A few rods ofl' its west shore the deepest sounding in the lake was made, eighty-seven feet. A narrow passage leads to the fourth basin, which is continuous to the cast with a valley, which cuts completely through the moraine and contains numer- ous small lakes, surrounded by extensive marshes. Its dt^pth varies from thirty to fifty-five feet. This basin is bounded on the north V)y Deer island, similar to Eagle, and a bar thickly overgrown witii rushes. The lake seems to end here, but if one pushes through the rushes, he emerges into the fifth basin, larger than the fourth and about the same dei)th. The valley continues northward several miles into Michigan, and con- tains Lake George, as large as the southern basin of James, besides many small pools. These are drained by Crooked creek, which again emerges from James lake on the west side of the second basin, and in less than half a mile empties into Jimerson lake. The whole connected series of 58 STUDIES IN INDIANA GEOGRAPHY basins seems to occupy three valleys, which were important lines of glacial drainage; one from the southeast through the first and second basins of James and Jimerson, one from the north through George, and the fifth, fourth and third basins of James, and one from the east into the fourth basin. The space between the east and southeast valleys, occupied on the map by the label, contains the highest, most precipitous and irregu- lar grouji of morainic knol>s in Indiana — rising at one point to 1,200 feet above tide. The kvel of James lake is about 1,000 feet. The whole region is as nearly Alpine in character as moraine topography can be, and though Alpine only in miniature, it presents a surprising variety of scenery, which rivals many more famous localities. Among the morainic lakes of Indiana, James lake is surpassed in size only by Turkey lake in Kosciusco county, which has recently been thoroughly surveyed by Messrs. Judaj' and Ridgley, of the Indiana Uni- versity Biological Station. A report of their survey appears in the Pro- ceedings of the Indiana Academy of Science for 1895, to which we are indebted for the map herewith reproduced, and for the following inter- esting data. The map tells its own story better than words can. Turkey lake is made up of two parts connected by a channel three-quarters of a mile long and from one to five feet deep. The part north of the channel, known as Syracuse lake, includes an area of three-cjuarters of 'a square mile; has an average depth of thirteen and a half feet and a maximum of thirty feet. The greatest length of the main lake is about four miles and its greatest width one and a half miles. The entire shore line is between twenty and twenty-one miles in length, and the area a little more than five and a half square miles. The average depth is computed to be between seventeen and twenty-two feet; the greate.st depth is sixt}--nine feet. An examination of the contour lines of the map shows that very much of it, an area computed to be three and a cpiarter square miles, is less than ten feet deep. If the level of the lake were lowered thirty feet the area would be reduced to one and fifteen-hundredths square miles, and it would consist of four bodies of water connected by chan- nels from 100 to 200 feet wide and less than ten feet deep. These would be: (1) A small area in Crow's Bay with a maximum depth of nineteen feet; (2) about one-half of Jarrett's Bay with a maximum depth of thir- ty-eight feet; (3) the main body of the lake, its width decreased almost one-half, and its maximum depth being thirty-six feet; (4) A small area toward the west end with a maximum depth of thirty-three feet. Lower the level of the lake forty feet and these four bodies of water would be sepa- rate lakes. "The similarity of the lake bottom to the surrounding country," remarks Professor Eigenmann, " which seems to have been little changed by erosion, makes it quite certain that the lake basin is due to the irregular dumping in a terminal moraine, parts of it containing deeper kettle-holes." Many interesting data in regard to shores, beaches,. THK MOKAINIC LAKES OF INDIANA 5!) outflow, evaporation, temperature, ice, etc., may be found in the report of Mr. D. C. Ridgloy before cited. T.ii'K History Of all the varieil features now jnesented upon the face of tlie earth there are probably none whose essential characteristics are more obvious, whose life histories are more easy to read than those of the inorainic lakes. They are all geologically young, those of Indiana being con- fined to the very latest moraines of the glacial period. They are mere babes born yesterday, and destined to die to-morrow. During the period of glacial melting it seems certain that all existing valleys, except drain- age lines of rather steep slope, would tend to be filled up. At any rate, many such half-filled valleys now exist, and it is probable that all the kettle-holes and basins have suffered a considerable diminution in depth. As soon as the surface became subject only to the wash of rainfall and was covered with forest, general erosion and removal of material from the slopes into the hollows was greatly diminished, and at present the results of these processes are practically nothing. The streams which now emjity into tlie lakes are few and small, and the quantity of sediment thus brought in is very trifling. A recognizable delta is almost unknown. Many of the lakes are great springs fed by inflows at the bottom, and the evaporation so nearly balances the supply that the outlets are small and feeble. Natural down-cutting of outlets is nowhere perceptible. The deposit of lime and iron salts from the overcharged ground-water is prob- ably doing more to fill up the lakes than surface erosion. This ]ihini)m- enon is more noticeable in some lakes than in others. Atjuatic plants are, as a rule, incrusted with lime, and mussel shells and pebbles upon the bottom form nuclei for similar deposits which soon render their origi- nal form scarcely recognizable. The water of some shallow lakes seems of milky whiteness on account of tlie deposit of marl on the bottom, and such lakes look, at a distance, like silver coins or platters laid down among the hills. Another very efhcient agent tending toward the extinction of these lakes is man himself. In the case of small and shallow lakes, artificial drainage has often resulted in their complete destruction, wliile the areas of large shallow ones have lieen reduced one-half or more. A third agency more effective than all others for the obliteration of morainic lakes is the growth of aquatic vegetation. The character and extent of this growth depends somewhat upon tiie depth of the lake and the slope of the shores, but chiefly upon the nature of the bottom. In this respect lakes may be divided into three classes — lime lakes, sand lakes and peat lakes. In lime lakes the bottom is composed of marl, and all vegetation is very scanty and stunted. Tliis is true to nearly the same 60 STUDIES IN INDIANA GEOGEAPHY degree of lakes with sandy bottoms. But a large majoritj' of the lake- beds are covered with a black, tenacious mud which furnishes the soil for a luxuriant growth of aquatic plants wherever the requisite shallowness and stillness of water permit. Small lakes are often surrounded by a bor- der of dense vegetation which extends out as far as the line of about twelve feet in depth. In the large lakes this occurs only u])on the west side, even when the conditions of soil and depth appear equally favorable upon the east side. This is due to the prevailing westerly winds, which create too much wave disturbance along east shores for the accumulation of peat. The lakes are literally being filled with solidified air, the great bulk of the solid material which composes the plants being absorbed from the gaseous ocean above and consigned to the watery depths below. The maps of Steuben count}' show in Fremont township Cedar lake as being a mile in diameter. In fact, there is no lake there. Some of the water has been drawn off by artificial drainage, and the remainder is now cov- ered by a floating, quaking bog with a few open lagoons. This lake has been buried alive by a growth of peat, and that there are many such in Indiana, the railroad companies which have tried to lay a track across them have found to their cost. Extinct lakes are more numerous than living ones, and their beds are marked by bogs or meadows underlain by fifteen or twenty feet of muck. The process is slow if measured by the years of a man's life; perhaps the peat bed extends into the lake only a few feet in a century. The present dominant race of men may pass away and leave these lakes still lying like bright jewels among the hills; but every one is doomed to final extinction. "The hills are shadows and they flow From form to form, and nothing stands : They melt like mist, the solid lands, Like clouds they shape themselves and go." But of all features of the landscape, lakes are the most ephemeral. As long as they remain they will continue to contribute to the service and delight of man. They fed the savage with fish, but they feed the more highly developed man with beaut}', and afford means for that re- laxation and healthful pleasure which the conditions of modern life de- mand. The time may come when the lakes of Northern Indiana will be the most valuable property of the region, and means will be sought for preserving, instead of destroying them. Between the Great Lakes and the (Jbio there is no more beautiful tract of country. At present, com- paratively few of the citizens of Indiana are aware of its attractions; but it cannot long remain in obscurity. Among its hills and lakes thou- sands of the coming generation will find their summer homes. ^^^ "A more detailed description of these lakes ma.v be found iu the 17th and 18th reports of the Indiana State Geologist. Vn.— THE NATURAL RESOURCES OF INDIANA W. S. liLATclILEY, State Geologist Too few of the residents of the state of Indiana have a proper con- ception of the natural resources found within her hounds. The text books on geography taught in the past, as well as those used at the pres- ent day, give but little exact information concerning those resources and that in a very condensed form. In the newspapers, which comprise the greatest educational factor of the masses, much has been published in recent years concerning natural gas. but while this resource has been of great value to a certain area of Indiana, it lacks much of being the most important natural resource of the state. Others there are, spread over a wider area, which have formed in the past, ami will continue to form, sources of greater revenue and prosperity to the people at large. Of these, as well as of natural gas, some information will be given in this article, which, it is hoped, will prove of value to the teachers of the state. The natural resources of the state of Indiana, as of any other restricted area of the earth's surface, may be classified into two great groups. The first of these consists of those forms of matter which have stored within themselves potential energy in the form of boat, which may be set free by combustion and then be controlled by some device of man and used by him to perform work. Such natural resources are called /we^s, the most imi)ortant of which, as found in Indiana are coal, natur.\l c.as and PETKOLEIM. The second group of natural resources consists of those forms of mat- ter which are devoid of any kind of stored energy which may be set free by combustion, but which are them.selves used bj' man for varied and inij)ortant purposes. The most valuable members of this group found in the state are soils, bvildixg stones and clays. The Natural Fuels of the State The fuels of the state, coal, natural gas, and petroleum, are valuable only for the stored energy in the form of heat which they contain. In speaking of these fuels the great law of the conservation and correlation of energy must ever be borne in mind. This law asserts, " That energy,"' like matter, "cannot be created, cannot be destroyed, but that one form ni l -mnn - 62 STUDIES IX INDIANA GEOGRAPHY can be changed into any other form." Man can invent no new forms of energy, nor can he produce a single iota of energy. He can only devise machines for transmuting or changing forms already existing into other and more available forms. But the question naturally arises, how came this heat to be stored in the coal and other fuels ? This question brings up another great truth which has become fully understood only in recent years ; namely, that the sun is the source of all the energy xi-sed in performing the ivork of the world. From the sun comes energy in the form of heat and light which fall upon the grass and grain and trees of the earth, and furnish the power or force necessary for their growth. Heat and light enable plants to assimilate food and to grow, and at the same time energy is stored up in their tissues. Suppose, for example, that 1,000 calories (heat units) of heat are used in producing an ear of corn. When the ear is mature that amount of energy, no more, no less,' is stored up in its substance. This energy can be made available to perform work for man in two ways : First, by burning the corn in a furnace, when the energy will be liberated again as heat and can be used to generate steam which in turn will cause wheels to revolve ; second, by feeding the ear of corn to a horse, in whose body it will be changed into muscular energy which can be exerted in turning wheels or in pulling loads. Or, man himself can eat the corn, and the energy which is stored up within it will in his body be changed into muscular and mental energy. In other words, we move muscles and think thoughts with the energy derived from sunlight. Plants alone have the power of thus storing up the energy of the sun's light and heat. Animals are wholly lacking in this power, and can utilize only the energy so stored bv' plants. This fact has been well pro- trayed by Professor Edward Orton in the following words: " The remarkable office of the vegetable cell is thus brought to light. It is a storer of power, a reservoir of force. It mediates between the sun, the great fountain of energy, and the animal life of the world. The ani- mal can use no power that has not been directly or indirectly stored in the vegetable cell. This storage is forever going on. Of the vast floods of energy that stream forth from the great center of our system, an insig- nificant fraction is caught by the earth as it revolves in its orbit. Of the little fraction that the earth arrests, a-n equally insignificant part is used directly in plant growth. But the entire productive force of the living world turns on this insignificant fraction of an insignificant fraction." Bearing in mind this great truth, we can better understand how in ages past the sun's light and heat were locked up in the cells of those plant's which flourished in the swamps of the carboniferous age. For thousands of years it accumulated within their stems and leaves and spores, and when, by the processes of nature, the plants w-ere changed into coal it still rt'mained, a most valuable heritage for future man. In the same way THE XATl'RAL RESOURCES OF IXDIA^s'A 63 the enerfry stored up in the natural gas and i)etroleuni of the Trenton rocks eanie from the sun and has l>een transmitted through the hodies of plants and animals. The most important thing tafayette) ce.\ The People. Xunil)er density race sex age occupations niar- rieil and single death rate, etc. VI. THE MUNICIPALITY Common Council Mayor Clerk Treasurer how elected powers duties tlie city cliarter, compare with those of Indianapo- lis, Ft. Wayne, etc. Vir. TH.VVEL AND TRANSPORTATION 1. Material and Condition of SlrceU. Pavements asphalt, brick and other cost and relative value sidewalks flag, cement, brick and other cost and relative value rules anil ordinances for construction and maintenance bridges amount of travel across street cleaning how done why is snow seldom removed? 2. Vehicles and Passengers. Character of vehicles drays, trucks, omnibuses, cabs, etc. num- ber passing various points numtier of foot passengers passing various points rights and privileges of foot passengers ami vehicles. 3. Street Railways. Franchises-^ — how obtained terms value routes length of track number of cars speed frequency capacity num- ber of passengers carried motive power and mechanical system cost of plant maintenance and running expenses cost per car mile l)rofits class of people using length of average ride time of day of greatest travel fares difl'erence between five and three-cent fares and its relation to income and wages rights of pul)lic to use of street rights of railway companies to use of streets municipal control or ownership of street railways compare Detroit, Toronto, Glasgow. 4. Relatidti of Tnink TAiie Railroad.s to City. Stations freight house and yards crossings number of pas- senger trains nunil)er of passengers nund)er of freight trains amount of freight shipped from and delivered to the city express companies and express business. ■'). Main Wagon Road.^ Leading into the City and Amount of Travel on Eaeh. G. Tran-iportatiijn on ]Vaba.-'. Municipal or Governmental Control of Telegraiih and Teleplvone Service. IX. POLICE DEPARTMENT Officers Courts apj^ointments responsibility crimes arrests convictions sentences enforcement of law. X. FIRE DEPARTMENT Officers employes companies engine houses engines alarm boxes eciuipment efficiency cost- number of fires ability to deal with a great conflagration. XI. ENGINEERINCi DEPARTMENT Employes -appointments duties imj)ortance of. XII. PUBLIC HEALTH /. Biiard of Health. Appointment powers regulations infectious diseases. 2. Disposed of Sewage and Garbage. Extent to which cess-pools and vaults are used danger.? extent to which sewers are used system of sewerage. 3. Cefineteries. .'/.. Water Supply. Private use of wells dangers public franchise, how ob- tained terms charges use of public supply for domestic pur- poses — —for fires — — peojile who most need public water supply municipal ownership of public water supply compare Chicago, Buffalo, Manchester, (England), etc. XIII. LIGHTING 1. Pidilic and Private. l*]lectric gas oil. 2. Frn.Dcli i'^e'i. How obtained terms cost. 3. Municipal Ownership) (f Elect ric Lighting and Gufi riant.<. XIV. FINANCE Assessment taxation revenue expenditures comparative cost of city governments ot United States and foreign countries. XV. BUSINESS 1. lloiiu Prodnds. Grain live stock timl)er brick clays, etc. 2. Sources and Cost of Power. A STUDY OF Till', CITY OP TERRE HAUTE 87 3. Manufactures. Wliiskey beer tools barrel stuff cars iron goods l)riek (quantity and value. 4. Wholesale Houses. Character volume nf Imsiness territory supplied. 5. Riiail Hdu.-^cs. Character volume of l)usiness. 0. Banks, Insurance, Building and Loan Aasociatvim, etc. XVI. DISTKinUTIOX OF WEALTH Individual wealth how aaiuired rich men incomes cost ,,f livhig expenditures for food clothing rent luxuries, etc. XVII. LAr.OR Labor organizations strikes wages in dilTcrcnt empinynients. XVIII. I'ROFKSSiONS Uivinity law medicine teaching ^^journalism engin- eering cost of preparation for incomes and salaries. XIX. EDUCATIO.N" ;. Piihlk- Si-honk. Organization courses of study buildings attendance school [)opulation teachers salaries cost Indiana State Normal School and its relations to the city. 2. Private Schools. Ros? Polytechnic Institute Coates College Commercial Colleges teachers of music, dancing, etc. ■J. Libraries. Size circulation character of books read influence, etc. 4. The Press. Newspapers and periodicals puldished and circulated in the city newspapers and periodicals published elsewhere and linulated in city. 5. Art (lolleries. I'^xhiliils and collections. a. Litrranj, Art and Mu^ieal Societies and Clvhs. Nuinl)er membershij) character of work lecture courses concerts, etc. XX. RKMCION Churches buildings value of property income members -attendance clergy Sunday schools missions Young Men's Christian Association. XXI. CHAUITIES Hospitals dispensary alms house orphan asylums insti- tutions and societies what is being done for the dependent classes- 88 STUDIES IN INDIANA GEOGRAPHY for tramps for criminals for children causes of poverty and crime prevention and relief of j)overty and crime. XXir. RECREATION AND AJIUSEMENTS Hunting fishing boating cycling, etc. parks athletic sports races, etc. public and private entertainments plays, etc. picnics excursions summer resorts- — —places of resort and amusement for laboring men should thej' be open on Sunday ? XXIII. HOME LIFE In families of different races incomes education intelligence and social jiosition relations of husband and wife divorces re- lations of parents and children relations of home life to idleness, vagrancy, vice and crime. XXIV. SOCIAL ORGANIZATION Groupings on basis of race, religion, politics, wealth, occupation, etc. standards of taste, intelligence and morals secret, fraternal and other societies peculiar customs and habits jjeculiaritics of lan- guage and speech. XXV. REGULATION OF CONDUCT Influence of education, religion, home training, public opinion, law prevalent motives of action. XXVI. FAMOUS MEN AND WOMEN OF TERRE HAUTE XXVII. PROBLEMS OF MUNICIPAL ECONOMY Is the problem of city management essentially a political, or an economic and l)usiness problem? relation of political parties to city government city government in the United States, past and present the civic and municipal renaissaiice. 1. Physical Probleins. Cheap, rapid and safe transit cheap and efficient lighting pure, cheap and abundant water supply, universally distributed ample and efficient sewerage suppression of nuisances the smoke nuisance the whistle nuisance the manufacturing nuisance the garbage and dust nuisance, etc. 2. Political Problems. Purity of elections honest administration of government expert and competent officers and employes enforcement of law. 3. Social and Moral Problems. Prevention and suj)pression of drunkenness, poverty, vice and crime help for dependent and criminal classes increase of intelligence and morality improvement in the cleanliness and beauty of the city. A STUDY OF THE CITY OF TERRE HAUTE 89 The outlino is inlfiulcd to be as nearl}- exhaustive as possible, and is as well adapted for university students as for lower grades. Tiie collee- tion of facts could be well done by pupils of the seventh and eighth grade, and with them would serve as an ever-accessible and unrivaled field for the study of home geography, and as a basis for the study of cities in general. In any grade the following advantages may be derived from such a plan: (1) The use of individual experience and observa- tion. (2) The acquirement of direct, personal and lirst-hand knowledge. (3) The value in itself, as information, of such knowledge of facts and conditions which intimately concern the welfare and conduct of every student. (4) The increase of general intelligence. (5) The mental dis- cipline obtained by the classification of such facts, and the discovery of their relation to each other and to other facts. (6) The conclusions which may be drawn from them by inductive reasoning. (7) A basis in ex})erience for the study of other cities and countries. (8) Practical les- sons in the science and art of civics and economics. The higher advan- tages will be attained in greater proportion as the grade of the student is more advanced. At the top geography runs insensiblj' into historj^, sociology and politi- cal economy; in a word, into the new and comprehensive science of de- mology. It is scarcely worth while to try to discover the cleavage plane between them. This paper is offered as a contribution to the method of study along this plane. X.— A SHORT HISTORY OF THE GREAT LAKES='= FRANK BTRSLEY TAYLOR. F. G. S. A. INTRODUCTION 111 studying the geographical development of Indiana, while we are, of course, concerned chiefl}- with the area of the state itself, a thorough and coniiirehcnsive treatment of the subject would require the consider- ation of some contiguous areas many times larger. For Indiana has not developed in anj' sense as a separate unit, Init rather as a fractional jiart of a very much larger area. One of the most important outside intiu- ences, especially in its bearing upon the development of Indiana's phy- siography, has been the existence of the valleys or basins of the Great Lakes, which lie toward the north. The direct influence of these basins has been comparatively small, but indirectly, through their effects upon the continental glaciers or ice-sheets, their influence has been quite im- portant. This article, however, is designed to present a brief outline of the whole lake histor}', so that it will not be possible to dwell at much length upon its relations to Indiana. The Present Lakes The Laurentian, or Great Lakes of North America, form the largest .system of fresh-water bodies in the world. No other, unless it be the un- connected group of lakes in Central Africa, bears any comparison with it. The Victoria Nyanza, which is the largest fresh-water lake known elsewhere, has an estimated area of between 25,000 and 30,000 square miles. The area of Lake Superior is 31,200 square miles, of Lake Huron 23,800 and of Lake Michigan 22,450. Lakes Erie and Ontario are con- siy the crumpling and folding of the rocks of the earth's surface. We shall see later that none, except possibly Lake Superior, in a qualified sense, are of this character, although eartli move- ments appear to have had much to do in other ways with their formation. Probably the first steps toward a scientific inquiry into the origin of the Great Lakes were those of the early followers of Agassiz. He first pointed out the fact that the whole region of the Northern States and the adjacent parts of Canada had been completely covered by a mighty glacier. The drift which overspreads these regions was appealed to by some as evidence of the glacier's power to scoop out solid rocks. But the fanciful guesses of Volney and the theories of the early gla- cialists have gradually given place to the results of methodical explora- tion, so that to-day the making of the basins of the Great Lakes is attributed chiefly to four distinct causes; viz., to the wearing, eroding action of streams; to the uplifting and tilting of the land; to the ob- structing action of the glacial drift and to the wearing-down or abrading A SHORT HISTORY OF THE GREAT LAKES 93 action of the glacier itself. All these causes have playetl tludr part. The lake basins were not gouged out entire by the ice-sheet, although it un- doubtedly widened them to some extent by tearing away the weaker ledges of their sides, especially where the ice mass moved against the rocks with full force. But the ice-sheet had little or no tendency to deepen them. They arc mainly old river valleys uplifted and tilted by movements of the solid earth and choked up and obstructed here and there by a glacial drift. PRE-GLACIAL AGES (Pre-Pleistocone) T^E Pre-Glaci.\l Cycle of Erosion Tlie northeastern (juarter of the continent, including Indiana and pnilialily all nf the fireat Lake region, was raised up out of the sea some time not long (speaking in a geological sense) after the last of the coal beds of Pennsylvania had been deposited. It is not possible to say when that was, even approximately, in years, but all authorities seem to agree that it was at least several millions of years ago. The thing for us to note especially here, is the very great age of this part of the continent as a land surface. Through all the long ages since the Appalachian moun- tains were uplifted the region of Imliana and the Great Lakes, and prob- ably the whole of Canada lying nortli of the lakes and the St. Lawrence river, have been a land surface, with sunshine, rain, wind, frost, chemical solution, creeks, rivers, the waves of lakes and the sea, vegetation and animal life coni?tantly at work upon it, sculi>turing and wearing down its surface. I\Iild climatic conditions had prevailed, and at the end of this long cycle of er()si(m, the whole surface of the land was deeply de- cayed, soft, almost rotten. The rivers had gone on for thousands and thousands of years deei)ening and widening their valleys and no dis- turbing element had intervenetl to seriously interrupt or modify their work. The decay of the surface was probaldy not so ilee]) as that of the southern Appalachians, as may be seen, for instance, at Asheville, North Carolina, where uninterrupted decay has gone on for a still longer time. But it was certainly not very dillercnt from that. It proljably resembled that part of Wisconsin which was not invaded by the ice of the glacial period, and the unglaciatcd area in Southern Indiana. In such regitms, besides deeply decayed rock and soil, there are clifls, "chimneys," "sugar- loaf rocks and other very old and fniil relics of subaerial erosion. As . a product of the long decay, a vast amount of loose material was left covering the whole surface of the country. In this way. chieliy, Wiis pre- pared the enormous (juantity of debris which was afterwards crushed and ground up by the ice-sheet, transported in large ([uantities by it hun- dreds of miles, and linally spread over the surface of regicnis far away. When the first ice-sheet began to gather upnn the highlands north of 94 STUDIES IN INDIANA GEOGEiiPHY the St. Lawrence river, the surface of the lake region presented a very different aijpearance from what wo see to-day. There were proliably, then, .no great lakes like those of the present time in this region, but only wide open valleys instead. Or, if the lakes were already in existence, they had i)robal)ly only very recently been produced by an uplift of the land which had tilted the old valleys in such a way as to cause them to hold water. When the first ice came, the cutting dow-n of the land by the streams had been far developed. The greater rivers had wide, open valleys; the lesser rivers flowed in valleys of comparatively great depth but moderate width, while the little creeks and brooks had each its own deep, narrow steep-sided gorge. This was especially true'of the country bordering the lakes on the soutli, as in Western New York and Ohio, while in the hard, crystalline rocks of the north the topography developed was still more rough, as in the region east of Georgian Bay. The proof of this condition is found in the discovery of many valleys deeply buried under the drift, and in occasional remnants of the old decayed surface itself. Buried valleys and gorges are common through- out the whole drift-covered area as far as known. One now filled with glacial drift, cuts acro.ss the neck of land l)etwcen Lake Erie and the west end of Lake Ontario, as though Niagara Falls had sawed its way through that .same region before. In Western New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio many buried valleys have been found of rivers of considerable size which formerly flowed northward to Lake Erie, opposite to their present courses. The upper Ohio is one of these, which had its valley to the north filled with drift, and was in consequence turned into a lake which overflowed to the west and finally cut down the obstructing barrier on that side and found a course to the Mississippi. Indeed, we owe it to the last glacier that the Great Lakes are wdiat they are to-day — brim full and standing nearly 600 feet above the sea. The tilting up of the land, alone, would have made the Lakes in the first place. But Niagara Falls Avould have speedily cut back to Lake Erie and drained it off, and prob- ably also lowered the level of Lakes Michigan and Huron, while the St. Mary's river would soon have brought Lake Superior down also. On- tario and the three upper Lakes would have continued to exist, much re- duced in magnitude, but Erie would probably have become extinct. Thus the glaciers, and the last one in particular, have acted as restora- tives by choking up the narrow parts of the outlet valleys, and so raising the level of the waters and compelling the rivers to find new courses and begin their cutting over again. The state of Indiana was a part of the ancient land surface, and suffered tlie jirolonged decay and erosion along with the rest. In the unglaciated part of the state south of Indianapolis, the old eroded surface may be seen to-day, and in the western part of the state there are some places A SHORT HISTORY OF THE GREAT LAKES 05 that fallow it only slightly luodifieil by glacial action. There are probablv many buried valleys in the northern and northeastern jjarts of the state where the drift is very deep, but none have yet been found equal to some of those in neighboring states. A lioring near the northern state line passed down through a great depth of drift and reached the old rock sur- face at a level slightly below the present surface of Lake Erie. Too little, however, is known as yet, concerning the rock surface beneath the drift to enable us to say much about it. We do not know what its drainage system was. Although Indiana fronts on Lake Michigan along a space of about forty miles at its northwest corner, the present drainage of that part of the state is determined by the configuration of the drift surfiice and only a very narrow strip, about ten miles wide, along the shore drains into the lake. It is possible that in pre-glacial times the drainage of Indiana was more intimately related to the lake valleys. The relations of the present time, however, afiord no indication whatever of the earlier conditions of drainage. A small area along the northern line of the state now drains to Lake Michigan through the St. -Joseph river of Michigan, and another small part drains eastward to Lake Erie through the Maumee river. But the arrangement of both these systems appears to be entirely dependent upon the present drift topography, so that the earlier drainage of both areas may have been entirely different. THE LAKES IN THE GLACIAL, OR PLEISTOCENE PERIOD The Lake Basixs a.nd the Ice-Sheets The glacial period, properly speakiqg, comprises the whole period of time from the first advance of ice as an ice-sheet down to its last and final disappearance. The question whether the period, as a whole, com- prised two or more distinct epochs of glaciation with warm epochs be- tween, or only one with minor variations, has been very much in contro- versy for some years. But the facts have constantly gathered in support of those who favor diversity, rather than of those who favor unity, and it now seems to be well established that there have been at least two or three, or possibly even four or five, distinct epochs in the glacial period, each with its own great ice-sheet. The growth of the ice-sheets was extremely slow. Fur some as yet unexplained reason the climate gradually grew colder, and the winter's snows in the regions surrounding Hudson Bay began to exceed the sum- mer's melting and evaporation, and as this went on year after year and century after century, a small ice-sheet formed on the high plateau of the Laurentide mountains north of Quebec, and gradually spread away over all the surrounding country. Other sheets like it were started in other high parts of the north, and all of them finally blended together as one grand glacier covering the whole northeastern quarter of the con- (;— 7 96 STUDIES IN IXDIAXA GEOGRAPHY tinent. ^^'hen the maximum extent of the ice was attained, the whole region of the Great Lakes was deeply buried under it, and the front of the ice reached southward to Nantucket, Long and Staten Islands; ex- tended across New Jersey and Pennsylvania in a zigzag line to the south- west corner of New York; then across the northwestern corner of Penn- sylvania and Central Ohio to a point near Cincinnati, where it pushed over a few miles into Kentucky; then back into Southern Central Indiana; across Southern Illinois, Central Missouri, Eastern Kansas and Nebraska ; and finally across the Dakotas and Montana to British America. [See map, page 33.] Then, for some equally unexplained reason, the great glacier halted, and finally withdrew again northward to the obscure re- gions whence it came, and its retreat was in the same order and as gradual as its advance had been. The advance and recession in each case was accompanied by many minor oscillations, with re-advances apparently periodic, as though the ice front had gone two steps forward and one back in advancing, and one forward and two back in retreating. This is substantially the story of each of the separate ice-sheets. But each successive one varied a little from its predecessor in the limits of its advance, and so did not stop at the same line. In the west, each one fell short in most places, of the mark reached by its predecessor, while in the east, it appears probable that the last one in some places over- reached all its predecessors. The ice of each sheet carried boulders, gravel, sand and clay frozen fast in its lower layers, and it was continually dropping some part of what it had and picking up more. Enormous quantities of this material lodged in the depressions in the rock surface beneath. But part of it was carried forward to the front where it was dropped at the melting edge. Where the ice front .stood a long time in one place, a ridge of debris accumulated and was left on the final with- drawal of the ice as a terminal moraine. There is a complex series of these moraines extending back northward from the extreme front ot the last ice-sheet. Their chief interest to vis in connection with the lake history is that they show clearly how the ice- sheet was related to the lake basins at successive stages of retreat. As the ice came down from the north and northeast over the uneven sur- face of the country, it had more or less pronounced currents of flow. It naturally moved faster and farther forward in the main valleys where it met the least resistance, and lagged behind in the higher, hilly regions- When the ice began to rise above the southern rims of the basins it spread away over the adjacent plains in great sheets that fitted them- selves to the wide, flat valleys with marvelous exactness, and even felt the influence of the lesser topographic features. At this stage the ice-front had a lobate form, each lake and great bay marking the place of a southward jirojecting blunt arm or lobe of ice. The ice-lobes spreading from the several basins finally blended together, A ^IIOUT III.^IXJRY OF TlIK GUEAT LAKES 97 and when tlie whole sheet had reached its maximum extent the lake basins had lost much of tjieir influence upon the flow, and the tinal front line fitted itself to the local topography almost as though the lake basins had not existed. At its climax the ice flowed over the great lakes as a river flows over a hole in the bottom of its bed. When the ice-front had retreated nearly to the lakes it again became segregated into distinct lobes with sharp, re-entrant angles between. The lands ])etwccn the lakes were the first to be left bare, and the ice lingered last upon the north and northeast sides of the basins. Three glacier lobes, corresponding to as many basins toward the north, entered Indiana: the Erie (with which was comltined the lobe from Lake Huron) covered the eastern part of the state, and the Saginaw and Michi- gan lobes combined to cover the northern and western parts. The com- bined effect of the extent, relative strengtii, oscillations, conflicts and the relative positions of these lobes was the prime factor in shaping the topography of the northern half of the state. With the probable excep- tion of the Wabash below Attica, every stream in this area had its course determined or largely modified by the features of the drift, and especially by the moraines. If the lake basins had been absent or differ- ently located, or if the ice had advanced from a different direction, the drainage systems and the general arrangement of the physical features of this part of Indiana would have been entirely different. The E.\rliek I(-e-I).\mmed L.\kes of the Glaci.\l Recession In the region of the Great Lakes the front of the ice-sheet retreated in a general north-northeasterly direction, in some places more nearly east and in others more nearly north, according to local influences. The present outlets of all the Lakes,- except Lake Huron, are from their east- ern or northern sides. Hence, as the ice-front moved slowly back, it at length withdrew to a position behind the drainage-divides south of the Lakes and xmcovered a little of the watershed of some of the lake basins. At these places lakes were formed by the collection of water from rain and from the melting ice, and in each case the surface of the lake so formed was held up to the lowest level nf the divide recently uncovered and this point became its outlet. To the north and northeast the great glacier still stretched away for hundreds of miles as a continental plain of ice. Its deep, solid mass performed the same service, temporarily, that the land does to-day: it acted as a great dam, and effectually prevented the escape of the water in that direction. The exploration of the several lake basins has revealed a large number of old shore lines and outlets, all now abandoned. Enough has already been learned to show that nearly all of them were made by ice-dammed lakes during the glacial recession. In the beginning these glacial lakes 98 STUDIESilN INDIANA GEOGRAPHY Figures 1 and 2 represent the first and fourth stages of the earher glacial lakes. The exact position of the ice-front all along the line is not j'et accurately known for any particular stage. In Figure 1 the map of the Erie lobe and Lake jMaumee is based on accurate information, but the contemporary positions of the other lobes are known only approximately. They may have stood a little farther forward or a little farther back than here represented. In Figure 2 the features are all accurately known except the precise positions of the Erie and Michigan lobe-fronts. Figures 1 and 2.— TAVO STAGES OF THE EARLIER GLACIAL LAKES. 100 STUDIES IX INDIANA GEOGRAPHY were small, and each one had its own outlet and was entirely independ- ent of the others. But with the progressing recession of the ice they grew larger and larger until the dividing lands between them were left uncovered. Then contiguous jjairs of lakes united, and always at the level of the lower one. In this way the lakes kept combining and find- ing new outlets at lower levels as the recession went on. The stability of each lake depended for the time being upon the position of the ice- front and its relation to the higher parts of the adjacent uncovered land surface. This makes the relation of the lakes to each other intimately dependent upon the direction of the retreat. It the general retreat had been directly north over the whole area the history of tlie glacial lakes would have been entirely different fri:)m that of a retreat directly east or northeast. The lakes that were formed in front of the ice-sheet during its retreat across the Great Lake region were very numerous and their relations and changes very complex. A detailed account of their historj' would require much more space than can be taken here. Figures 1 and 2 will help to give a general idea of the changes. The history of the glacial lakes of the Erie and Huron basins are most fullj' known and will serve best as an illustration of the kind of changes that took place. One of the earliest of the ice-dammed lakes was Glacial Lake Maumee (Fig. 1), formed in the western jjart of the Maumee valley when the ice- front had retreated to the east from Fort ^^'ayne, which is on the lowest point of the western rim of the. watershed of Lake Erie. This lake cov- ered part of Ohio and Indiana and had its outlet westward through Fort Wayne to the Wabash river at Huntington. It had its most permanent form when the ice-front extended in a great curve convex to the west from Findlay, through Defiance to Adrian. Professor C. II. Dryer has described this lake in another chapter, and the reader is referred to that for fuller details. But Lake Maumee was only a beginning. For as the glacier continued its retreat, the lake grew larger and largei-, and would have continued to expand indefinitely, except for the fact that a lower notch in the lake rim than that at Fort Wayne was at length uncovered. This first lower passage was at Imlay, Michigan, due north of Detroit and about west of Port Huron. The discharge in this direction lowered the lake permanently twenty-five or thirty feet. The w^ater that went out this way, flowed southwest across Michigan finally reaching the Mississippi. As the retreat went on, the ice in the Erie basin finally separated from that which was coming southward from Lake Huron; one lobe retreating northeastward down Lake Erie and the other northward up the St. Clair valley towards Lake Huron. But the two separate ice-dams continued to hold the lake as before. With further retreat, the Huron lobe finalh^ uncovered another passage lower than the one at Imlav. This new outlet was on the "thumb" A SIIOKT IIISTOKV OF THE GREAT LAKES 101 well out towards it?; mid, ahout nortli-iioithwest from Port Huron. (Fig. 2.) To this new notcli tlie level of the waters dropped again. By this time the retreating Saginaw glacier also held a lake in front of it, so that at this stage there were three lakes forming a chain; one in the Erie hasin, one in the Saginaw basin and one in the Lake ]\Iichigan basin. These three lakes have lieen nanu.l Lake Whittlesey, Lake Saginaw and Lake Chicago respectively. The wat(>r flowed westward through the chain, and finally through the southern part of the city of Chicago and down the Des Plaines and Illinois rivers to the Mississippi. At the next steji of retreat the "thumb" of Michigan was left free of ice, and Lake M'hittlcsey fell and blended with Lake Saginaw. This new combina- tion is called Lake Warren. The chain of three lakes was thus reduced to two, Lake Warren and Lake Chicago, and this arrangement lasted for a considerable time. At its niaxiniuni extent Lake Warren covered the south half of Lake Huron, including Saginaw I!ay, the whole of Lake Erie and the low ground between it and Lake Huron, extended eastward to within twenty or thirty miles of Syracu.se, N. Y. and probably covered some of the western end of Lake Ontario. In the meantime the ice was retreating in the east as well as in the west, and uncovering lower ground in that direction. Finally, in Central New York an open passage was left along the ice-fi'ont to the Mohawk valley at a lower level than the outlet to Lake Chicago. Then the discharge of Lake Warren turned eastward, and the level of the waters fell so as to uncover the land between Lake Huron and Lake Erie. Across this the dischai'ge of the upper lakes liegan to flow, and with the continued falling at the east, the water in the Ontario ])asin soon dropped below the level of Lake Erie, and then Niagara river and the Falls came into existence. Aliout the same time, or soon after the fall of Lake Warren, the ice had so far withdrawn from the northern ba.sins as to allow the waters of Lake Superior. Michigan and Huron to unite as one lake with its outlet through the St. Clair river to Lake Erie. The Ice-Dams If Wf wish to ol)tain a realizing sense of the massiveness of the ice- dams that held these lakes up. we niay readily do so by taking account of some of the facts which have been revealed by the study of the drift. At Defiance, the ice-front stood in alwut sixty feet of water; at Saginaw in about 150 feet, and at Toledo, Detroil and Port Huron in about 200 feet. And yet, the ice-lobe in each case kept its place and fitted itself to the form of the valley, as revealed by the flat, low, water-laid moraines at these places, apparently as perfectly as though no standing water had been present. Tliis shows clearly how massive and .solid the ice must have Ijcen. It did not break u]i much and float away as icebergs, but was able to withstand wind and wave and its own bouvancv or tendency 102 STUDIES IX IX'DIANA GEOGEAPHY to float in the water. Its front in the water must have been undercut by the waves and reduced to a great perpendicular or perhaps even over- hanging cliff of ice; but it kept its place, and built its moraine almost exactly where it would have built it if no water had been present. These lobes must have been at least 300 to 400 feet thick close to their edges in the lakes, and they must have been solid and compact and com- paratively free from cracks and crevices. This shows that their forward motion must have been exceedingly slow, for rapidly moving glaciers are always riven by many dee^D cracks and crevasses, which cause them to break up and float away easily when they enter deep water. By tracing the single terminal moraine that was made at the edge of the ice when its front points stood at Port Huron and Saginaw, (during the time of Lake Whittlesey), the immense proportions of the ice-dam have been disclosed (Fig. 2). The apexes at the two places mentioned stood on ground only a few feet above the present le^-el of Lake Huron. But, at the same time, the ice-front rested on the highlands 130 miles north of Saginaw, and also on those in Canada 180 miles northeast of Port Huron, at an altitude of over 1,000 feet above the present lake level. The cross-section of the glacier between these two highlands (about 200 miles apart) probably had a slightly arching surface, like the ice-cap of Greenland, so that the depth of the ice in the middle of the lake measured upward from the present lake surface, must have been somewhere near 1,500 feet. When the ice-sheet covered most of Indiana and crossed the Ohio river, the depth over central Lake Huron must have been much greater, prob- ably two or three times as great. At that time the ice was at least 500 or 600 feet deep over the present site of Terre Haute, and nearly as deep over that of Indianapolis, and it thickened gradually northward. If an observer could have stood on one of the hills in Brown count}' at that time he would have seen to the east of him the great wall of the ice-front extending south towards Kentuck}', while towards the west it would have been seen in the distance stretching away towards the southwest. For hundreds of miles to the east and west, and for 2,000 miles or more to the north, the glaring, white desert of snow-covered ice, like that seen in the interior of Greenland by Nansen and Peary, would have appeared, stretching away out of sight with not a thing under the sun to relieve its cold monotony. It is hard to think of Indiana and her neighboring sis- ter states as being clothed in such a shroud-like mantle as this. But it was in large part this same ice-sheet, coming perhaps four or five times in succession, that covered the state with the inexhaustible soil of the drift, and made Indiana the fertile agricultural state that she is to day. In Figure 3 both positions of the ice front are located with only approximate ac- curacy. Each is placed in the last position in which it could have held the lake in front of it. The position shown for the Ontario lube is earlier in time tlian tliat of the Ottawa, for Lake Iroquois was drained off before Lake Algonquin. 104 STUDIES IN INDIANA GEOGRAPHY Glacial Lakes Algonquin and Iroquois After the fall of Lake Warren, Lake Erie became independent, and only two large glacial lakes remained in the Great Lake area. (Fig. 3.) One filled the three upper basins and is known as Lake Algonquin. Its outlet was south to Lake Erie ; for the ice-sheets still covered the lands to the east and northeast of Georgian Bay, where the only other lower ways of escape were situated, as the land stood at that time. The Chi- cago outlet was then apparently about 100 feet above the lake level, and so did not serve as an outlet for Lake Algonquin. Finally, the retreat- ing ice uncovered Balsam Lake at the head of the Trent valley in On- tario, east of the south end of Georgian Bay, and the discharge of Lake Algonquin shifted to tliat place. The erosion effects of the great outlet river are quite plain along the cour.*e of the Trent valley. The modern Trent river is a comparatively small, stream. Probalily the head of this outlet was not much below the level of the St. Clair outlet at that time, so that the change produced only a slight lowering of the lake. About fifty miles northeast of the north end of Georgian Bay lies Lake Nipissing in an east-and-west trough which leads through the highlands to the Ottawa valley. Lake Nipi.ssing, itself discharges, westward through French river to Georgian Bay. But it is only three miles across a low, swamjiy divide at the head of the lake to Trout Lake which dis- charges eastward through the Mattawa river into the Ottawa. This old divide, called tlie Nipissing Pass, is somewhat less tlian 100 feet above Georgian Bay, and the town of North Bay is built upon the west end of it on the Shore of Lake Nipissing. To the eastward for about 100 miles the Mattawa and Ottawa valleys extend as a narrow trough, 700 to 800 feet deep. As things were then, this trough was much the lowest opening in the rim of Lake Algonquin ; but, so long as it was filled with ice, the lake kept its level. Thus, a relatively small ice-dam was aide to main- tain a very large lake. This dam continued to hold the water in jilace until the ice filled only twenty-five or thirty miles of the lower, narrow part of the Ottawa valley. If no other changes had interfered the lake would have dropped its level 500 feet when the dam broke. But before the dam gave way there were upheavals of the land which tilted up the whole I'egion northeast of the lakes, so that when the lu-eak finally came the lake dropped much less than 500 feet, and it pi-ol)al)ly fell rather slowly. These same upheavals produced another important effect. They shifted the discharge of Lake Algonquin back again from the Trent valley to the St. Clair river, and this restoration took place a consider- al.ile time before the Ottawa ice-dam broke. At its maximum. Lake Algonquin was considerably larger than the present combined areas of Lakes Superior, ^Michigan and Huron, including Georgian Bay. The water that gathered in the Ontario basin was held up by the ice- sheet which formed a dam across the St. Lawrence vallev northeast of A SIKIKT HISTiiKY i iK THE (iliKAT LAKKS 10.1 the lake. This filaeial lake is known as Lake Inxjuois. Its outlet was through the ^^ohawk valley, ami at its greatest extent it was eonsidera- bly larger than ]>resent Lake (.)ntario. After Lake Algonquin had begun its career, it was some time before the eastern water fell to the level of Lake Iroquois. Lake Algontiuiii endured also for a considerable time after Lake Iroquois had l)een drained off; so that the former was the longer-lived of the two and was, in fact, the longestdived of all the gla- cial lakes within the St. Lawrence basin. The reality of the great ice-dams that held u]> the larger lakes is no longer to be doubted. For within the last two or three years the beds made by the temporary rivers that drained them oft' when the dams gradually gave way, have Ijeen found and partially explored. Tho.se of falling Lake Warren are in Western New York, those of Lake Iroquois on the northeastern flanks of the Adirondack mountains, and those of Lake Algonquin, less fully explored, are in the Mattawa and Ottawa valleys. The Lake Beaches One of the most reniarkalile things about the old shore lines of the Great Lake region is the fact that they are not horizontal when comjiared with present water levels. The beaches at the western end of the Erie ba.sin, and the Algominin beach in the east half of the Superior basin are substantially horizontal. But all the rest are more or less inclined upward in a northeasterly direction. The inclination is not the .same in different beaches, being generally greatest in the older and higher ones; and it varies considerably in the same beach in different places. That all the beaches were horizontal when they were made seems certain. It follows that their present departure from that attitude is a measure of the amount of upheaval of the land since they were made. The older, higher beaches record the net result of many changes. But the lower, younger beaches record only such changes as occurred after they were made. Hence, theoretically, the deformation of the latter ought to be generally simjiler and show fewer irregularities. The Algonquin beach rises from twenty-iivc feet above the lake at Port Huron to 63-5 feet above it near North Bay, Ontario, and it is a little over 400 feet above Lake Superior in nearly the whole of that basin. It is 20-5 feet above the lake at ]\Iackinac Island, but descends southward and passes under Lake ^lichigan proliably about 100 feet at Chicago. The Iroquois beach also rises toward the northeast in tlu' Ontai'io basin. THE LAKES IN THE POST-GLACIAL OB I'UST PLEISTO- CENE PERIOD The Nipissinc; Great Lakes AVe come now to a part of tiie lake histcry whicli has scarcely any con- 106 STUDIES IN INDIANA GEOGRAPHY nection with Indiana, but which is of great interest to geologists [and geographers generally. This interest arises partlj' from the fact that^this epoch of the lake history is so recent, certainly mostly within the period of human occupation of America, and partly from its intimate relation to Niagara Falls and its gorge and the bearing which these have upon the date of certain great changes which have taken jjlace in very recent geo- logical time in the northeastern part of the continent. When the water went out of Lake Algonquin, the glacial history of the Great Lakes came to an end. The water in the three upper basins then fell to the level of the Nij^issing pass and it became their permanent outlet. (Fig. 4.) This arrangement lasted for a relatively long period .of time, for the beach which the waves of that time made around all three of the basins is the strongest and most heavily developed of any in the Great Lake area. On account of its association with the Nipissing pass, it is called the Nipissing beach. Although it is now found at heights of more than 100 feet above the present lakes in the extreme northeast, the connecting channels between the three lakes of that time were only a little wider or deeper than those of to-day. In Mackinac Straits the Nipissing beach is about forty-five feet above Lake Huron, and the strait was formerly about a mile wider. At Sault Ste. Marie the beach is about fifty feet above Lake Superior. The St. Mary's river of that time was about a mile and a-half wider than now, and was more like a strait than a liver. The Nipissing beach was, therefore, the shore line of three great lakes which were almost as distinct, and had nearly the same relations to each other as the corresponding three lakes of today. So they are called the Nipissing Great Lakes. Many evidences attest the long duration of the lakes at the level of the Nipissing beach. On a shore which is comjjaratively new it is a common thing to find bays almost cut off from the main lake by long slender gravel bars or spits which have been built out across their mouths by the waves. There are fine examples of this type on the present shore of Lake Erie about the west end, and on the east and south shores of Lake On- tario. But when a shoe line is old, like the Nipissing beach, such bays are either filled up entirely or are cut ofi by wide sand or gravel plains and turned into separate lakes. There are a large number of small lakes on the coasts of the present upper Great Lakes which were Figure 4. The Nipissing beacli is confined to the basins of Lakes Superior, Mich- igan and Huron as shown by the heavy Hue. This beach has been explored on nearly all the shores. From North Bay eastward forty miles to the Ottawa river, the scoured bed of the former outlet stream is very well marked. The shaded por- tion of the map represents the contemporary area of the sea. It entered the Ontario basin, but dipped under the present lake along the south side and the west end. The limits of the marine area are indicated with only approximate accuracy. I. CO > 7: ,.Jr^8s*«^'**'^^^^^*w'^ ^.^ w Nosan/i 108 STUDIES IN INDIANA GEOGRAPHY produoed in this way by the lodging of the shore-drift of the Nipissing beach. In the Mattawa valley the work done Ijy the outlet river shows that it flowed for a long time. Like the older beaches above, the Nipissing beach is not now horizon- tal, but is tilted up at the northeast. The latter, however, is quite re- markable from the fact that although it is tilted, it shows no measureable irregularities in its plane. In this it differs in a marked way from the other beaches. From the northwest side of Lake Superior to the south side of Georgian Bay, and from the north end of Green Bay to the north- east corner of Lake Superior and the north side of Lake Huron the plane in which this beach lies appears to be perfecth' uniform. The direction of maximum rise is about north twent3--seven degrees east, and the rate of rise is nearly seven inches per mile. Thus, the Nipissing beach slopes downward toward the south-southwest and j^asses under the water of each of the present lakes. The depth at which it passes under the present lake level is estimated to be about forty feet at Port Huron, 100 feet at Chicago and twenty-five feet at Duluth. The uplift which tilted the Nipissing plane up at the northeast, raised the outlet at North Bay, and would have raised the level of all three lakes correspondingly, had not another outlet been found. Soon after the tilting of the land began, the head of the St. Clair river became lower than North Bay and the outflow therefore turned to it. The arrange- ment of the lakes then inaugurated by this change has continued, appar- ently without interruption, to the present day. A wide region lying east and northeast of the upper lakes has also had an eventful history in recent times. Its close connection with the lakes makes a consideration of some events of its history indispensable to a full understanding of the lake history. The Chami'lain Sub-mergexce and Uplift It has long been known that the northeastern part of the continent has been very recently uplifted out of the sea. Fossil shells of marine species, bones of whales and seals and marine fish have been found in various places, especially in the valleys of Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence river, in deposits which were uplifted at that time. The amount of ma- rine submergence was only a few feet at New York and Boston, but in- creased northward to over 300 feet in Maine and New Brunswick, over 400- at the northern line of New York and over 500 at Montreal and about 600 at points farther northeast. Marine fossils have been found as far up the St. Lawrence as Brockville, nearly to Lake Ontario, and up the Ottawa river as far as Lake Coulonge, a little below Pembroke. The bones of a whale were found in a gravel bed near Smith's Falls, Ontario, many years ago 440 feet above the sea, and the top of the beach in which A SHORT HISTdliV i>\- THE GREAT LAKES 109 tliry wcvo iMiried is about thirty feet higher. The sea at that time extend- ed through a strait into Lake Ontario, and up the valley of tlie Ottawa a considerable distance above Pemliroke. ( Fig. 4, shaded area .) The char- acter of the fossils and also the very youthful condition of all the river beds lielow the old marine level, prove the recentness of the uplift that raised the fossiliferous Champlain beds out of the sea. Turning our attention now to the upper lakes, we find that the same characters prevail below the Xipissing beach, except that there is no evi- dence of marine life. The very youthful river beds and shore lines below the Nipissing beach are quite marked, in contrast with the older charac- ter of the forms above, corresponding closely in this respect with the evidence of newness in the area of the Champlain Sea to the east. These two great areas, the marine on the east and tlie fresh-water on the west, lie close together, almost interlocking, so that it seems certain that it was one and the same uplift that affected both. When the Chamidain beds were uplifted out of the sea, that same movement ui)lifted and tilted the area of the Great Lakes. The evidence points plainly to the conclu- sion that it was this uplift that tilted the Nipissing beach and shifted the outlet of the upper lakes from the Nipissing pass at North Bay to the St. Clair river at Port Huron. Falls of Niagara The clock by which we can time these events in a roughlv approxi- . mate way is the cataract of Niagara. Lake Erie furnishes on the aver- age about one-ninth of the water that goes over the falls; the rest comes from the three upper lakes. I'.ut when the upper lakes discharged over Nipissing Pass to the Ottawa valley, Niagara Falls was grcatlv reduced in volume, having only the discharge of Lake Erie. The great gorge extending six miles from the falls down to Lewiston, has obviousl/been made by the cataract itself. According to the laws of erosion it m'ust be true that the falls would cut out the gorge more rapidly when they re- ceived the water of all the lakes above, than when thov had onlv'that from Lake Erie. We may analyze the course of events best bv takino- them backwards; thus, Niagara has had the whole discharge of "the foul- lakes above ever since the Champlain uplift shifted the outlet of the upper three. Other things (structure and hardness of the rocks, etc.) being equal, as they are in fact substantially, the gorge made during this time should be wide and deep. Tf we follow the gorge down from the falls we find that it has this character for a little over two miles. But at this point, just above the railroa.l Ijridges, it suddenly grows narrow and shallow. Returning to the lakes again, we recall the fact that durim: all the relatively long time of the Nipissing Great Lakes the three upper basins discharged ea.stward to the Ottawa valley. During that time, therefore, Niagara Falls were small and weak and should have made a compar- 110 STUDIES IN INDIANA GEOGRAPHY atively shallow, narrow gorge, and should have cut it out much more slowly. Corresponding precisely with this expectation, Me find the relatively narrow, shallow gorge of the Whirlpool Rai>ids, three-fourths of a mile long, extending from just above the railroad bridges down nearly to the Whirlpool basin. This part of the gorge, then, was made by the river when it had only the discharge of Lake Erie. The fact that Niagara Falls are slowly cutting their way back through the rocks is well established by observation. Since the first accurate survey by -Tames Hall in 1842, several other surveys have been made, the last in 1890, and it is determined from these that the main or Horse- shoe Fall has receded during that period at a mean rate of about 4.17 feet a 3'ear. If the two and a fifth miles of wide gorge next below the falls had all been cut at this rate it would have taken about 2700 years to do it. But there is much reason to believe that the rate during the meas- ured period has been considerably more rapid than the average, so that it may have taken two or three times this long to do the cutting. It seems certain that it must have taken less that 10,000 years, but it pro- bably took more than 5,000. There is no basis for an exact calculation, and a more precise statement than this would be no more valuable or reliable. This, then, is a rough measure of the time since the outlet of the upper lakes was shifted from North Bay to Port Huron; since the marine beds of the east were uplifted, and since the sea went out of the Ontario basin. For the smaller streams to have cut the narrow gorge, three-fourths of a mile long, must have taken a very much longer time, for the weakened catai'act would cut back much more slowly. It jn-obably took several times as long to make .that part of the gorge as for the longer, wider gorge above. And the time since Niagara began its work must have been still longer, for we have taken no account of the gorge below the Whirlpool basin. We have seen that the Great Lakes have been very long in the making and that many different forces have been concerned in the work. The giving way of the ice-dams may have been relatively sudden, and perhaps some of the upheavals that affected the lakes were also comparatively sudden: we do not know as to that. It is certain, however, that most of the forces concerned operated only in the slow ways that we see going on now around us. The lake basins are very old; and yet, being newly re- stored in part liy recent glacial obstructions, they are also new. Con- sidering tlie magnitude of the waters they hold and the great volume of their outlet rivers, the rocky barriers between the basins seem thin and frail. It is only because their youth has lately been renewed by the ice- sheet, with its beneficent contribution of drift, that the Great Lakes of to-daj' rejoice in the fullness of their strength and proclaim their exist- ence with the voice of Niagara. Fort "Wayne, Ind., April, 1897. INDEX Note. — In preparing tlie paragraph on p. 18 concerning the geological age of th& surface of Indiana the eilitur overlooked the statement of Prof. E. T. Cox (Report Ge- ological Survey of Indiana, 1872, p. 138), that upon the hilltops of Pike county he found gravels similar to the ln-tMi-ii deposits of Kentucky and Illinois. Mr. Lever- ett has examined these deposits and has found them to be quite widely distributed over .Siuthern Indiana as far north as Martin county. He believes them to be of Tertiary or Cretaceous age. This means that the surface of Indiana may be much younger than the geological map of the state would indicate. Mr. Leverett has recently examined the course of the CoUett Glacial River, de- scribed on p. 2;i, and is of the opinion that it did not pass through Clarke and Floyd counties, but emptied into East White River. Age of Indiana Strata . . - Agriculture Algongquin, Lake, map of • • . Animals of Indiana Aspects of Xature, Century of Changes in ... . Atmosphere Beaclies, Lake : Beavers of Indiana Birds, Destruction of Bisons of Indiana Black .%il Blanchard-Tiftin Moraine .... Blatchley, W. S., Natural Re- sources of Indiana Boulder Belts Boulder Clay Butler, A. \\'., A Century of Changes in the Aspects of Xature Caves Cedar Lake Central Plain, The Champlain Sea . 1 Champlain Submergence .... Channel Lakes . Cities, The Study of Clays of Indiana G— S IS, 111 27 103 74 10 :'., Wo 74, 7.T 81 74 34 io 111 •JO 21 72 24 56 19 )7-108 108 56 82, 89 69 Clear Lake 54 Climate of Indiana, Map of. . . 2.S Coal Fields 26, 63 Collett Glacial River 22-23,111 Committee of Ten, Report of . . 14 Cordilleran Ice .Sheet 32 Crooked Lake •'56 Davis, Prof. W. M., Address of quoted 7 Definitions of Geography • • • . 10-11 Drift, Glacial 96 Drift, Materials of 30 Drift, Thickness of 40 Dunes 23 Eagles of Indiana 75 Erie Ice Lobe 3!i, 49 Erie-Wabash Channel .... 50, 51-52 Erie- Wabash Region 42-43 Drainage of 43, 49 ^Moraines of ... . Physical History of . Settlement of . . . Surface and Soil of Eskers Falls and Rapids . . . . Field Work Fishes of Indiana . . 45 48 51 51 22 23 13 80 112 INDEX Forests of Indiana 72 Forests, Removal of 7S Fort Wayne 51-52 Fuels 61 Gage Lake 54 Gannett'?, H. AV., Maps .... 11 Gas Field 26, 64 Geoanthropology 11 Oeobiology 11 Geology, Relation to Geography 12 Geomorphology 11-1.3 Geophysiology 11 Geography, College Courses in . 15 Geography, Divisions of ... . 11 Geography, The !N'ew !i Summary of 15 Geographical Congress, Third In- ternational, Resolutions of . . 10 Gilbert, G. K , His Work in Erie- Wabash Region 44 Cilacial Boundary 26, 28, 33 Glacial Gathering Grounds ... 31 Glacial Lakes, Map of 98-99 Glacial Period 95 Glacial Succession 32 Glaciated Rock Surfaces .... 31 Gorges 23 Great Lakes, A Short History of . 90 Erosion in Region of ... . 93 Origin of 92 (ireenland Ice Sheet 32 Hettner, Prof., View of Geogra- phy 10 Hydrosphere 10 Ice-Dams 101 Ice Invasion, First .32 Ice-Lobes 96 Ice-sheets 95, 102 Improvement of Geographical Teaching 7 Indiana: A Century of Changes in the Aspects of Nature ... 72 Indiana, Animals of 74 Building Stones of 67 Clays of 69 Climate of 24 Coal of (io Itrainage of 20 Elevation of 17 Forests of 72 Glacial Deposits of 28-29 Geological Structure of . . . IS Hills of 21 Indian Villages of 74 Iron Ores of 70 Lakes of 23, 53 Limestones of ..••.. . 67 Moraines of . . 19, 22, 38, 45, 46, 96 Natural Gas of 64 Petroleum of 05 Physical History of .... 18 Physiographic Features of . 21 Physiographic Regions of . 18 Plains of 21 Population of 26, 27 Position and Boundary of . 17 Pre-Glacial Surface of . . . 94 Rainfall of 24-25 Resources of 26, 61 Sandstones of 68 Settlement of 27 Soil of 66 Temperature of 24, 25 Topographic Map of . . Frontispiece Vegetation of 25 Indian Villages of Indiana ... 74 Interglacial Interval, First ... 34, 36 Iron Ores of Indiana ...... 70 Iroquois, Lake, IMap of 103 James Lake 57 Kankakee, Basin of 19, 23 Kankakee River 21 Kankakee Glacial Lake .... 39 Karnes 22 Keewatin Ice-sheet 32 Kettle-hole Lakes 54 Knobs 22 Labrador Ice-sheet . , 32 Lagrange County, Lakes of . . . 55 Lake Algonquin 103-104 Lake Chicago 98, 101 Lake Duluth 98 Lake Erie 90-91 Lake Huron 90-91 Lake Iroquois 103-104 Lake Maumee 50, 98, 100 Lake Michigan 90-91 Lake Ontario 90-91 Lake Saginaw 99, 101 Lake Superior 90-91 INDEX 113 Lake AVarren 101, 105 Lake Whittlesey 99, 101 Tiakes, Glacial, Classilication of . 53 Lakes, Ice-dammed 97 Lakes, Life History of 59 Lakes of Indiana, Morainic ... 53 Lapparent, T'rof.de, View of Geog- raphy 10 Leverett, F. tilacial Deposits of Indiana 29 Limoetones of Indiana 67 Lithosphere 10 Long Lake 56 Loess 21, 35-36 Jlackinder, II. J. View of Geogra- phy 10 Marshes 24 Maumee Lake 20, 23 Maumee River 43-44 Michigan, Lake, Basin of ... 19 Mississinewa-Eel Moraine . . . 46 Jloraines 19, 22, 38, 45, 4(), 96 IMoraine Topography 47 Neolithic Man 76 Neumann, Prof. View of Geogra- phy 10 Niagara, Falls of 109 Niagara River 101 Nipissiing Reach 106 Nipissing Great Lakes 105, 107 North America, Glacial I\Lap of . 33 Northern Plain, The 19 North West Territory, Seal of . . 76 Ohio Valley 19 Ohio Slope, The 19 Paroquets of Indiana 75 I'enck, Classification of Morainic Lakes 54 Petroleum Field 26, 65 Physiography 12 Pigeons of Indiana 75, 77 Resources of Indiana, Natural • 26, 61 Ritter's Idea of Geography ... 9 Saginaw Ice-I^obe 49 Salamonie-Blue Moraine .... 46 Sandstones of Indiana 68 Shades of Death 23 Shriner'sLake 56 Silts, Glacial 36 Silver Hills 22 Sinkholes . . 24 Soils of Indiana 27, (i6 St. Joseph River 44 St. Mary's River 44 St. Mary's-St. Joseph ISIoraine . 45 Stone Quarries 26 Stones, Building 67 Stria?, Glacial 28, 29, 31, 33, 40 Taylor, F. B. on the Great Lakes 90 Terraces 23 Terre Haute, a Study of ... . 83 Turkey Lake 24, 58 Turkeys of Indiana 75 Valleys, Buried 94 Valleys of Indiana 23 Wabash River 20 Wabash River, Scanty Knowledge of 8 Wabash-Aboit Moraine .... 46 A\'alden Pond 55 Warren County, Glacial Deposits of 40 Weed Patch Hill 22 White Occupation, Results of . . 75 White River 20 Whitewater River 20 Williamsport, Glacial Stri;e near 40 Wisconsin Boundary 33, 36-37 Wisconsin Ice Invasion .... 37 Wyandotte Cave 24 3 ( — LIBRARY OF CONGRESS !' , 014 751 262 4 I