PAPERS PRESENTED AT GENERAL SESSIONS 85 



its low stage in 1889, reacliiug at or near the former date 

 to the line that limits the large and the dense timber of 

 its bordering groves. Below that line are only smaller 

 and scattered trees, of which Capt. E. E. Heennan in- 

 formed me that the largest found by him and cut a few 

 years ago had fifty-seven rings of annual growth. Within 

 the twenty-five years since the building of Fort Totten, 

 this lake has fallen nine or ten feet, and it has fluctuated 

 four feet under the influence of the changes in the aver- 

 age annual precipitation of rain and snow during the past 

 dozen years." 



**The high stage reached by this lake about sixty years 

 ago appears to have been limited by an avenue of dis- 

 charge eastward into Stump Lake, which rose at the same 

 time to within about three feet of this height. The latter 

 and smaller lake, receiving no large tributary and lying 

 in a basiii that nowhere extends many miles from the lake, 

 was prevented by evaporation from rising quite so high 

 as Devils Lake, which, during abundant years of rain 

 and snow, receives a large tributaiy, the Mauvaise 

 Coulee, draining a broad area that stretches sixty miles 

 northwestward to the Turtle mountains. The outlet of 

 Devils Lake into Stump Lake was nearly due eastward 

 from Jerusalem, situated on Lamoreaux Bay at the most 

 eastern portion of the entire lake shore. With an over- 

 flow at this point. Devils Lake may many times have been 

 raised to this beach by periodic variations in rainfall 

 during the many centuries since the ice age. ' ' 



''At the time when the last ice sheet retreated, how- 

 ever, the confluent water of Devils Lake and Stump Lake 

 were raised to a shore line which now has a slight ascent 

 from west to east, lying twenty-one to twenty-five feet 

 above the low stage of Devils Lake in 1889. This shore 

 is traceable around both lakes, passing above the water- 

 shed that now divides them." 



Our 1922 records now show that the level of the lake 

 has fallen about eighteen feet since June, 1883, when it 

 was 14.39.08 feet above sea level, the reading at present 

 being 1421 feet above sea level. The recession of the 

 water during the eighteen-foot vertical drop in thirty- 



