In Winter Quarters 



inconsequential original beginning of 

 the ice sheet, under which this lower 

 end of Lake Michigan once awaited 

 the sun's releasing rays. This sheet 

 extended southward some two or three 

 hundred miles from what is now the 

 site of the city of Chicago, and is sup- 

 posed to have had a slope of not less 

 than 25 feet per mile towards its dis- 

 tant center in the north. Its thickness 

 therefore over the present site of the 

 Blackstone must have been something 

 more than 6,000 feet well over a mile; 

 and if the same grade obtained all the 

 way up to the apex the summit pre- 

 sented the dazzling spectacle of an 

 ice peak at least eight miles above the 

 level of the seas. Think of tobogganing 

 down a hill 1,000 or 1,500 miles long, 

 and coasting all the way down the 

 Mississippi Valley into Yucatan! I 

 suppose that upon some such tales of 

 real old-fashioned winter sports the 

 gray-haired cavemen of prehistoric 

 times regaled the cavedom "kiddies" 

 [12] 



