JO DAVIESS COUNTY. ;>!) 



rocky base of the bluffs for many miles. There is, however, a chain of 

 sloughs opposite Galena, and along the months of Fever river and Small- 

 pox crrek. where there is a low alluvial bottom, timber grown, and made 

 np of Mississippi mud and sand. This is the flood plain or flood bed of 

 the stream, over which the annual overflows of high water extend. 

 Farther down the river this bottom spreads out to several miles in ex- 

 tent. In the western part of the township of Hanover, bottom timber 

 land, alluvial grass land, and a table land high and dry, and suscepti- 

 ble of cultivation peopled by a considerable settlement about Hunts- 

 ville landing exhibit all the characteristics of the ordinary Mississippi 

 alluvial bottoms. Farther down, in Carroll county, this bottom changes 

 into the broad, well known sand prairie an old, broad extended, glit- 

 tering Mississippi sand bar. 



Loess and Modified Drift. The regular marly loess of the Mississippi 

 bluffs, such as is found opposite Fulton City, at Warsaw, and at other 

 localities further down, is not a marked feature along the western limits 

 of JoDaviess county. Its bluffs are mostly composed of massive rocky 

 formations. The bald bluffs, composed of whitish, partially stratified 

 sands and clays, were not observed; but there are mound-like eleva- 

 tions, and masses of brown, marly, sandy clays along, among and over- 

 capping some of these chains of bluffs, which undoubtedly owe their 

 origin to the same agencies which deposited the loess of the bluffs, 

 lower down the stream. These brown deposits are loess marls and clays, 

 slightly modified by local conditions. Within the limits of the city of 

 Galena, and at other points in Fever river valley, and forty or fifty feet 

 above ordinary water level of Fever river, there are heavy outcrops of 

 a well marked, distinctly stratified clayey deposit, which shows every 

 characteristic of the most marked and well defined loess of the lower 

 Mississippi bluffs. Thin seams of reddish clayey marls alternate regu- 

 larly with thin seams of a whitish, tough, unctious-feeling clay. The 

 seams are from one to four inches thick ; the stratification is complete ; 

 the lithological character seems to be identical : the thickness is from 

 ten to eighteen feet : and the extent into the hills indefinite, but prob- 

 ably limited. In the marly seams I found great quantities of a fluviatile 

 shell, in a fair state of preservation. These shells are quite small, run- 

 ning from the size of a wheat grain to that of a large barley corn. I 

 have several times, within a fe\v years, noticed the same shell, or a 

 -. ly allied sp. -\vn thick over the silt and mud after the floods 



of the Mississippi had subsided, and the flood bed had become over- 

 grown with a dense growth of grass. Beneath the shadow of the ^ 

 the damp ground looked as if it had been thickly sown with large wheat 

 kernels. Subsequent overflows no doubt imbedded these, and where 

 antiseptic properties mingled with the silt, they will no doubt be pre- 



