BROWN AND REDWOOD COUNTIES. 565 



Topography.] 



The Little Cottonwood river through Bashaw, in southwestern Brown county, flows in a 

 valley 25 feet below the general level, with an alluvial bottom an eighth to a fourth of a mile wide, 

 not bordered by steep bluffs but by gentle slopes. Thence through the central part of the county 

 this valley retains nearly the same features, and it is only in Cottonwood township, within a half 

 dozen miles above its mouth, that its depth increases to coincide with that of the Minnesota river, 

 to which it is tributary. 



Lake Hanska, seven miles long but somewhat river-like in its narrowness and its rather 

 crooked east-southeast course, bordered by moderately or gently sloping shores of till that rise 

 10 to 20 feet above it, may indicate an avenue of interglacial drainage, now in large degree filled 

 and obscured by the till of the last glacial epoch. 



The valley of the Minnesota river on the north side of these counties is from 165 to 180 and 

 in some portions 200 feet deep, having a bottomland of alluvium 5 to 20 feet above low water and 

 from three-fourths of a mile to one and a half miles wide, bordered by steep bluffs which rise to 

 the general level of the country. Within this valley at numerous places are jutting knobs and 

 small ridges of gneiss and granite, exposures of Cretaceous strata, and terraces of modified drift, 

 which are described farther on in treating of geological structure. From the top of the bluffs the 

 vast prairie stretches away beyond the horizon, having a smoothly undulating surface of till, which 

 appears to be in general approximately level, though a considerable ascent, varying in amount from 

 75 to 150 feet, is made imperceptibly in a distance of twenty to twenty-five miles southwestward 

 across these counties. 



Here and there this sheet of unmodified glacial drift or boulder-clay, the direct deposit of 

 the ice-sheet, is sprinkled with knolls, small and short ridges, or mounds, of gravel and sand, which 

 rise sometimes by steep, but again by moderate or gentle slopes, 10 to 15 or 20 feet above the gen- 

 eral level. The distribution and origin of these kame-lik'e deposits of modified drift are more fully 

 noticed on a following page. 



In the southwest corner of each of these counties, their even contour, which to this distance 

 from IJie Minnesota river may be called in general a vast plain, is changed; and a gradual rise of 

 200 or 300 feet takes place within a distance of a few miles, along a massive terrace which extends 

 from northwest to southeast and east-southeast. This line of highland forms the northeastern 

 border and first prominent ascent of the Coteau des Prairies, which farther west rises gradually 

 and at length steeply again, to the much higher watershed between the Mississippi and Missouri 

 rivers. The south part of Stately, the most southwest township of Brown county, lies upon the 

 foot of the sloping border of the Coteau, which here is formed by the massive, mostly drift- 

 covered ridge of red quartzyte that extends in a nearly east to west direction in northern Cotton- 

 wood couiity, its crest being one to two miles south of the south line of Stately. In northwestern 

 Redwood county a gradual rise begins a few miles south from the Cottonwood river, and in six or 

 eight miles southwestward to the corner of this county amounts to about 250 feet, beyond which a 

 slower rate of ascent continues in the same direction to the belt of swelling and somewhat hilly 

 till at the northeast side of lakes Shetek and Sarah, in Murray county. On the Winona & Saint 

 Peter railroad, which makes this rise obliquely, running from east to west, the ascent from Lam- 

 bertou to Walnut Grove, in ten miles, is 79 feet; and in its next eight miles, to Tracy, is 180 feet. 



The only tract in these counties that exhibits a conspicuously morainic contour is in Stately, 

 and reaches from the elbow of Mound creek six miles west into the edge of Germantown in Cot- 

 tonwood county, with a width of three or four miles, bounded on the north by the Cottonwood 

 river. It is crossed by the lower part of Mound creek, so named because of its mounds, ridges 

 and hills, which are 25 to 75 or 100 feet high, abrupt and strown with boulders and pebbles, 

 Elevations, Winona & St. Peter division, Chicago & Northwestern railway. 

 From John E. Blunt, engineer, Winona. 



Miles from Feet above 

 Winona. the sea. 



Minnesota river, bridge 162.50 821 



Minnesota river, high water 162.50 807 



New Ulm 165.31 837 



Siding 169.00 994 



Sleepy Eye 179.72 1034 



Redwood Falls . 205.00 1028 



