CHAPTER I 

 THE CHANGING FACE OF NATURE 



HICAGO is the center of a region of quiet 

 but varied beauty. He who limits his 

 excursions to the city parks or the im- 

 mediate vicinity of the city sees only a 

 monotonously level plain, but to him 

 who wanders along the North Shore, 

 explores the Dunes, or rambles over the 

 wooded hills of the nearby moraine 

 country there are presented bits of landscape that charm even the 

 casual observer with their wealth of form and color. The encir- 

 cling horizon, line shrouded in the shimmering haze of the lake or 

 broken by the billowy hills, the nearby woodlands, the cloud 

 shadows that play among them, the cleared land checkered by 

 its varied harvests or dotted with grazing cattle, the brook 

 playing hide and seek among the tangled shrubs and ferns, the 

 bird song whistled from the bough tip all are sources of exqui- 

 site pleasure. Poet and painter fairly astound us with the revela- 

 tion of beauty which they, with fine sensitiveness, perceive in 

 even so commonplace an outlook. Science too is a revealer. It 

 adds a third dimension to the landscape; it gives depth. It 

 delves below the surface to the foundation. It gives the per- 

 spective of time. To the thoughtful man the outstretched view 

 is not alone a beautiful prospect; it is a voice from the past and 

 speaks of history as eventful as do the care-wrought furrows of 

 the human face. 



Many agencies of land formation, disintegration, and alter- 

 ation have been at work in times past to produce the present 

 features of this region, and most of them are still at work chan- 

 ging its appearance slowly but surely. Go out along the shore 



