THE TENTH OE ITASCA MORAINE. 175 



rivers, successively tributary to the Mississippi from the south between 

 Lakes Itasca and Pemidji, existed as g-rand topographic features of the 

 country before the Ghicial period, being then occupied by streams flowing- 

 in the same northward direction as now. 



The ice front forming the northern boundary of Lake Agassiz at the 

 time of accumuhition of the Itasca moraine probably jmssed not far west 

 of Red and Roseau lakes to the vicinity of Winnipeg. The remarkable 

 group of eskers east of Birds Hill station of the Canadian Pacific Railway 

 was perhaps deposited at the angle where the border of the ice-sheet 

 turned back southwestward. In that course it seems to have reached 

 across the lake area to the iDOwlder-strewn escarpment of the Pembina 

 Mountain east of Thornhill, and beyond to have passed south along the 

 west shore of Lake Agassiz into North Dakota. 



Its terminal moraine, about 50 miles south of the international bound- 

 ary, consists of two crescentic series of knolls and hills, with multitudes 

 of bowlders, in townships 155 and 156, ranges 56 and 57, crossed by the 

 head streams of Forest River and culminating in Pilot Knob.-' Thence 

 the front of this great ice-lobe appears to have extended westward to the 

 north side of Devils Lake, and north-northwestward by the east part of 

 Tm'tle Mountain, again entering ]\Ianitoba and passing along the moraine 

 of the west part of the Tiger Hills and of the Brandon and Arrow hills. 



Upon the country east and north of Devils Lake the Itasca moraine 

 seems to be divided into several belts, which are marked by abundant 

 bowlders and by knolls and hillocks of till and others of kame gravel and 

 sand, sometimes occupying a width of a quarter of a mile, and rising only 

 10 to 25 feet above the adjoining surface of, smoothly undulating till, such 

 as are crossed by the railway within 2 miles west of Lakota and at two or 

 three places in township 153, ranges 62 and 63, north of the east part of 

 Devils Lake, and again forming tracts of notably rolling and hilly surface 

 from 1 to 6 miles in width, such as are crossed to the number of two or 

 three in a journey from Milton, Osnabrock, or Langdon southwest to 

 Devils Lake, and likewise in traveling from Devils Lake due north to the 



'U. S. Geol. Survey, Bulletin No. 39, pp. 61, 67-70. These very interesting morainic loops are 

 described in Cliapter VI, in connection with the Herman shore-line west of the Elk and Golden 

 valleys. 



