FREEBOEN COUNTY. 377 



Surface features. | 



considerably in area but are alike in a 1 ! essential features. The eastern 

 belt of rolling land passes through sections 5, 9, 16, 21, 2S, 33, in Newry 

 township; through sections 4. 1). IB, 20, 30 and 31 of Moscow; through sec- 

 tions 6. 7. IS, part of 17, 19 and 30, of Oakland: section 36 of Hay ward, and 

 diagonally southwestward through Shell Rock, leaving the state east of 

 Shell Rock river. In Shell Rock it is less marked, but a rolling surface is 

 found along the valley of the Shell Rock river, accompanied by timber, and 

 through sections 2. 10. 15, 16. 21. 22. 27, 28, and 33. This belt varies from 

 one to three miles in width, and the short ridges and conical hills of which 

 it consists rise from twenty-five to sixty feet above the smooth prairies 

 adjoining on either side, their most characteristic development being in 

 Newry. in section 16. 



The other area of rolling surface occupies much of the central portion 

 of the county, and varies from four to twelve miles in width* its most 

 marked development being in sees. 1 and 2 in Pickerel Lake township. It 

 covers nearly all of Bath, Bancroft and Albert Lea, and the northwestern 

 third of Freeman. It also embraces the southeastern third of Hartland. 

 the eastern three-quarters of Manchester, nearly all of Pickerel Lake and 

 Nunda, the southeastern corner of Alclen and a belt about two miles wide 

 through the west part of Mansfield. It extends westward and northwest- 

 ward in Faribault county nearly to Lura. The hills that diversify the 

 surface in this part of Freeborn county are generally formed by smooth 

 swells and gentle depressions in the gravelly clay, or hardpan of that 

 part of the state, but sometimes they are abrupt and and stony, rising 

 from seventy-five to one hundred feet. The valleys between are frequently 

 wet, and contain much peat. The material of which the hills consist is 

 the drift-sheet of the Northwest, mainly a gravelly clay, but sometimes 

 gravel and sand in oblique stratification. The rest of the county is either 

 flat or moderately undulating. The smoothest portions are the eastern two- 

 thirds of Oakland, the greater part of London and the western "half or two- 

 thirds of Freeborn and Carlston. The marsh occupying sec. 12, Hayward, 

 and parts of the adjoining sections, is commonly called the "big slough.'' 

 The maximum depth of Freeborn lake is reported to be twenty-five feet, 

 and of Geneva lake fifteen to twenty feet. The town of Albert Lea is 

 forty-two feet above lake Albert Lea. The stream flowing from Fountain 



