TURTLE MOUXTAIK 173 



ately undulating till, about a mile wide, with frequent bowlders, rising- 10 

 feet above the surface eastward, which crosses the central part of township 

 160, range 74, in a north-northwest course, having a descent of 40 feet 

 within the first mile on its west side. The belt may represent the course 

 of the combined Fergus Falls and Leaf Hills moraine, across the eastern 

 margin of the area of Lake Souris, passing thence northward by Lords 

 Lake to Butte St. Paul, Bur Oak, and Bear Buttes, on the west part of the 

 Turtle Mountain area. 



The highland of Turtle Mountain, extending about 40 miles on the 

 international boimdary, with two-thirds as great width, diversified hj 

 many subordinate hills and short ridges, 50 to 300 feet above adjoining 

 depressions, rises with a massive general form, suggesting, as seen from 

 some distant points of ^dew, the rounded back of a turtle; but as seen 

 from the south or north its many hills and buttes present a serrated out- 

 line. Its altitude above the surrounding country is 300 to 800 feet, the 

 summits of its highest hills being about 2,500 feet above the sea. Beneath 

 a veneeidng of glacial drift, which is in large part morainic and generally 

 strewn with many bowlders, averaging perhaps 50 to 75 feet in thickness, 

 Turtle Mountain consists of nearly horizontally bedded Laramie strata, 

 chiefly shales, with very thin seams of lig-nite. At or below the base of 

 this highland the fresh-water Laramie formation rests on the marine series, 

 which comprises the Fox Hills sandstone and Fort Pierre shale, the two 

 great shale formations being separated by a sandstone stratum which out- 

 crops on Ox Creek and Willow River, and on the Souris River between 

 Minot and its most southern bend. 



TENTH OR ITASCA MORAINE. 



On the south side of Pokegama and Leech lakes, and westward to 

 Little Man Trap Lake and the southern arms of Lake Itasca,^ the tenth 



'This lake has been called by the Ojibways, from time immemorial, Omushkozo-Sagaiigun (Elk 

 Lake), accorcliug to Rev. J. A. GilfiUan iu Fifteenth Annual Report, Geol. and Nat. Hist. Survey of 

 Minnesota, for 1886, p. 460. Its present name was given to it by Schoolcraft at the time of his 

 exploration of the sources of the Mississijipi in 1832. Rev. W. T. Boutwell, who was a member of 

 that expedition, was asked by Schoolcraft to give the Latin words meaning "truth" and "head," and 

 from these words, Veritas and caput, the name was made by writing them together and cutting oft', like 

 Procrustes, the first and the last syllables. (Geol. and Nat. Hist. Survej' of Minnesota, Final Report, 

 Vol. I, p. 51. "A recent visit to Luke Itasca," by Warren Upham, Bulletin of the Minnesota Academy 

 of Natural Sciences, Vol. Ill, pp. 284-292.) 



