DOUGLAS AND POPE COUNTIES, 1888. WARREN UPHAM. 



but further toward the place of the latest remnant of the glacier these original kames 

 become more and more distinct. It is hard to understand how, under the theory of 

 the ice origin of these ridges, they should show the following characteristics: 



1. From Otter Tail county the level of the base of this series descends and never 

 ascends, /. e., where the series enters Douglas county, in Miltona, it is on the contour 

 of 1,450 feet; at a mile and a half north of Garfield it is at 1,450 feet; at the west end 

 of Lobster lake, in Moe, it is at 1,400 feet; at the west end of lake Oscar 1,400 feet; in 

 section 3, Nora, 1,350 feet; in section 30, White Bear lake, 1,200 feet; at the Blue 

 Mounds, 1,200 feet; in section 34, Barsness, 1,200 feet; section 23, Gilchrist, 1,200 

 feet; Norway Lake, 1,200 feet to 1,250 feet; New London, 1,200 feet; Roseville, the 

 general gravelly plain, 1,200 feet; Zion, Stearns county, bottom of the ancient water- 

 course, 1,150 feet; Richmond 1,100 feet; St. Joseph 1,050 feet; St. Cloud 1,000 feet. 

 There are minor irregularities in this steady descent which may be attributed either 

 to modification of the contours by subsequent drainage, or to slight error in the con- 

 tour lines as drawn on the county maps. 



2. Why this belt twice crosses obliquely the main morainic belt of the region, 

 and in opposite directions. 



3. Why the series is so narrow. 



4. Why the direction changed 90 within the limits of Pope county. 



5. Why, in any place, these deposits should take on the characters of a kame, 

 consisting of one or more long, parallel, gravel ridges, as they do in Blue Mounds and 

 Barsness, unless there had been a large glacial river flowing at the time of deposi- 

 tion, m t the direction of these ridges. 



6. If such a river formed the gigantic kame at Blue Mounds and in Barsness, 

 why its further effects cannot be seen. 



7. Why should the main ridge, which is of gravel and sand in Blue Mounds 

 and Barsness,* be bordered by a valley on either side, the outer bluffs of which consist 

 distinctively of till with a smooth or undulating upper contour, rising abruptly 50 to 

 100 feet above these valleys? 



These features are all explainable on the supposition that the copious southward 

 drainage from the interlobate area, where now the Leaf hills lie, dammed out of the 

 Red River valley by the tongue of ice that lingered there, was gathered into a large 

 river which flowed southward along the eastern margin of that tongue of ice until, 

 guided in the main by an older glacial valley, it was carried eastward to the Missis- 

 sippi. N. H. w. 



*The writer has examined this ridge only at Blue Mounds and in Bareness. See Thirteenth Annual Report, pp. 17-19, 1884. 



