164 THE GLACIAL LAKE AGASSIZ. 



aud 144, range 39, on the road from "White Earth to Red Lake, also south 

 of Mountam Lake, and at the east side of the Lower Rice Lake, the Leaf 

 Hills moraine is well developed, forming- hills 50 to 75 feet and occasion- 

 ally 150 to 200 feet or more in height, profiisely strewn with bowlders. It 

 continues north in a hilly belt several miles wide through range 39, by the 

 sources of Poplar and Hill rivers, to the south side of Lost River, in the 

 edge of the Red Lake Indian Reservation, where it turns sharply westward 

 on the southeastern Herman shore of Lake Agassiz, in the south edge of 

 township 150, range 40. 



From this bend or angle of" the moraine its belt of knolly and hilly 

 or rolling drift, mainly till, with many bowlders, occupying a width of 

 about 5 miles, stretches west-southwesterly 25 miles, crossing Hill and 

 Poplar rivers, and passing by Badger Lake and other small lakes in the 

 vicinity of Erskine, at the head of Badger Creek. It includes much of 

 the large wooded tract, with very plentiful lakes, southeast and south of 

 Maple Lake, and enters the area of Lake Agassiz. where it loses its 

 unevenuess of contour, between the west end of Maple Lake and the 

 Sand Hill River. This morainic belt, lying just outside and southeast of 

 Lake Agassiz, partially bordered its shore, and elsewhere was separated 

 from it only by a long tamarack swamp, and farther west by Maple Lake, 

 with an adjoining- narrow strip of lowland. 



Slopes of the ice surface descended toward the angle of its boundary 

 from extensive areas on the east, northeast, and north; and their conver- 

 gent drainage formed an exceptionally large glacial river which was laden 

 with nuich gravel, sand, and fine silt, washed away from the englacial drift 

 that liad become exposed on the thinned outer portion of the ice-sheet. A 

 well-defined watercourse, which carried this river from the glacial melting 

 at the time of formation of the moraine, starts from three lakelets in the 

 north half of section 34, township 150, range 40, near the apex of the 

 morainic angle, and was traced southwestward and southward to the Sand 

 Hill River, passing obliquely about 9 miles through the morainic belt and 

 7 miles beyond, across a moderately imdulating expanse of till. In its first 

 3 miles, extending to the Hill River, in section 5, township 149, range 40, 

 the channel is two-thirds of a mile to 1 h miles wide, having a smooth aud 



