TWENTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 231 



to the landscape from the large areas which are covered with the yellow 

 clay. At the mouth of the Kaw the water line is just below the elevation 

 contour of 750 feet, and at the Nebraska line the water level is below the 

 850 foot contour. Yet everywhere within a mile or two of the river the surface 

 rises to over 1,000 feet, and at Pilot Knob in the city of Leavenworth, and 

 another Pilot Knob at Atchison, the elevation reaches over 1,100 feet. West 

 of the Stranger in Leavenworth and Atchison counties, and in the western 

 part of Doniphan, stretching into Brown county, the plateau keeps the higher 

 elevation. 



Where the yellow clay has not covered up the subjacent rock#, there is 

 found in the ampitheatres and other valleys a lower plateau or step to the 

 higher one whose base is of sandstone and of sandy shales, at an elevation 

 from 1.000 feet down to 850 feet, and its curved slopes have more affinity to 

 the yellow clay topography than to the limestones, and hence its character is 

 not as readily detected. It shows, however, very plainly around Leavenworth, 

 and in the valley of the Little Stranger, in the higher lands of Wyandotte 

 county, and far away in Brown county. More details of it will be given 

 further on, and we may speak of it distinctly as the sandstone plateau, or 

 the sandstone horizon. 



There is one topographical feature that is important only in limited areas. 

 That is the accumulation of great masses of boulders. Resting on the bed- 

 rock, under the yellow clay, red quartzite, granite, and greenstone boulders, 

 and gravel, may be found nearly everywhere wherever a stream, however 

 small, has cut down to the older formations. This may be seen within the 

 limits of Kansas City, at Leavenworth, Atchison, Muncie, and elsewhere. 

 On the Missouri front the boulders are, however, very rare, though they are 

 frequently abundant in ravines only a few rods within the bluffs. Though 

 widely distributed, they only prominently mark the surface at few locali- 

 ties, and these are back from the river. The divide west of Salt creek and 

 the Little Stranger is one continuous string of boulders from north to south, 

 overlaid on the higher ridges with the yellow clay. They form rough piles 

 in the timbered slopes to the Big Stranger, and some are over a ton in weight. 



The bluffs of the Missouri, as has been remarked, are largely covered 

 with timber, and the appearance of much of the four counties is similar. 

 But it is found that a great proportion of the timber, especially at the higher 

 elevations, is young, the growth that has sprung up since the prairie fires 

 have been kept down. In this is an example of the influence of man in de- 

 termining topographical forms. 



All along the Missouri front, from Wyandotte to Doniphan, landslides 

 have been numerous. In places it seems that nothing but loose earth and 

 vegetation had been moved, but in others, e. g., southeast of Connors station, 

 great masses of rock have slid and turned on their edges, and trees have 

 grown on their flanks. Near Kickapoo and elsewhere this is a constant 

 menace to the safety of the railway roadbed, and therefore a constant ex- 

 pense. The cause of this will appear further on. Landslides have occurred on 

 the inland creeks, but much more rarely than on the Missouri. The drainage 

 system of these counties may be largely inferred from what has been said of 

 the contour of the land, and will be verified by looking at the map. The 

 northern Wolf creek in Doniphan county and the north-south trough of the 

 Stranger cut off the narrow region to the east of them from the general 

 Kansas and Nebraska drainage, and so leave it a region of very short streams, 

 mostly with deep valleys, which in many instances converge and pass through 

 the Missouri bluffs by the narrow openings before referred to, and leaving 



