WASECA COUNTY. 407 



Terminal moraines.] 



to ten miles. Its hills are almost universally till or unmodified glacial 

 drift, I'ising in smooth but variable slopes, and exhibiting no parallelism or 

 system in their trends. From Okaman, at the north line of Waseca coun- 

 ty, and from Waterville, in Le Sueur county, southeastward through the 

 northeast part of losco and the west half of Blooming Grove, to the south- 

 west corner of this township, two miles north of Waseca, these elevations 

 are 30 to 50 feet high. Through Woodville, within two to four miles east 

 and southeast from Waseca, inconspicuous scattered drift hills and mounds, 

 constituting a generally rolling surface, represent the morainic series. In 

 Otisco, the next township south, it rises to its usual prominence in section 

 5, one and a half miles east of Wilton, where we find numerous steep 

 ridges and round or irregular hills, more strown with boulders than the 

 other portions of this township, which are moderately rolling and occa- 

 sionally hilly. The east two ranges of sections in New Richland are in- 

 cluded in this belt, being mainly covered by morainic mounds, swells and 

 hills, 30 to 50 feet above the intervening hollows. 



In the northeast corner of Waseca county, the east half of Blooming Grove and the north- 

 east edge of Woodville are part of the gently undulating area between these morainic belts. The 

 contour is approximately level, as seen in any extensive view, but it includes occasional broad 

 hollows which are depressed 20 to 25 feet. 



The northwest part of this county, west of its moraine, is also moderately undulating or roll- 

 ing, in prolonged, smooth slopes, the highest swells being 10 to 30 or 40 feet above the neighbor- 

 ing sloughs and lakes. This description applies to Janesville. southwestern losco, Alton, and 

 Saint Mary; and in the southeast part of this county the western two-thirds of New Bichland 

 have a similar surface. 



About a third of Waseca county, including its southwestern townships 

 of Freedom, Wilton, Vivian and Byron, is a very flat expanse of till, in 

 some parts imperfectly stratified. The difference in elevation between the 

 highest and lowest portions of the surface, connected by slopes from a 

 quarter of a mile to one mile in length, is only five to ten feet. This is the 

 eastern margin of the vast intra-morainic area of slightly or moderately 

 undulating till which extends from here northwest to Big Stone and Tra- 

 verse lakes and the Red river valley, its width -being from the moraine of 

 the Leaf hills and lake Minnetonka on the northeast to that of the Coteau 

 des Prairies in southwestern Minnesota. The very smooth and often al- 

 most perfectly flat surface of these townships, and of a large part of Blue 

 Earth and Faribault counties appears to have been due to the leveling ac- 



