Kansas During the Ice Age. 41 



Hiawatha, other gravel pits have been opened of similar char- 

 acter and age, judging from reports. 



Another class of drift-filled channels are those which are 

 mostly beyond the edge of the till, and therefore are much 

 more easily traced. One system of channels of this class is 

 found in the Wakarusa valley. The channels along the noxth 

 side of the system are most evident because the edge of the ice 

 on the north abounded in northern erratics, and because they 

 have been less subject to erosion than toward the center of the 

 Wakarusa valley. The principal channels may be briefly 

 traced as follows: From Dover to Auburn; another from east 

 of Burnett's Mound, southwest of Topeka ; southeastward along 

 Linn creek; and also southward past Pauline. Other patches 

 of larger channels are found along the Wakarusa, south and 

 east of Clinton and southeast of Lawrence. 



A somewhat similar channel, though less perfectly filled with 

 gravel and sand, crosses over the divide four to five miles south 

 of Wamego into the valley of Mill creek. It lies along the 

 western edge of the bowldery strip already mentioned, and 

 seems to have been the outlet of the Kaw lake, which will be 

 described in the next section. 



Lacustrme Deposits. From the extent of the till and of 

 bowlders it will be seen that the ice sheet filled and crossed the 

 trough of the Kansas river from Wamego to Lecompton. As a 

 result a lake was formed on the west which rose nearly 200 

 feet above the present level of the river, or about 1,175 feet 

 above the sea. The ice pushed into the lake on the east side, 

 and debris from the ice, as well as material from the Big Blue 

 and upper Kansas and other smaller streams, deposited in this 

 lake deep deposits of sand next the edge of the ice and loesslike 

 silts and clays further west. These beds accumulated to a depth 

 of 100 feet or more. Bowlders were scattered over the basin 

 up to the water level, carried either by icebergs or by shore 

 ice. The channel northwest of Manhattan, being part of the 

 lake, was strewn with bowlders and afterwards partly filled 

 with loesslike silt. 



Loess. A thin mantle of loamy clay covers the till in the 

 northeastern part of the state generally. It is rarely if ever 

 ten feet thick, except in the bluffs near the Missouri river. 

 It there has the lighter buff color, but further west it is of a 

 darker reddish tint and more clayey, as though it partook of 



