THE ELEVENTH OK MESABI MORAINE. 177 



on the north side of the Assiniboine a few miles northwest of Griswold, 

 and thence it takes a northwest course, lying mostly from 5 to 8 or 10 miles 

 northeast of the Assiniboine and approximately parallel with it to the 

 Arrow River and Bird Tail Creek, beyond which I have no definite infor- 

 mation of its farther course. On both sides of the Arrow River it rises in 

 prominent elevations, with characteristically rough contour and plentiful 

 bowlders, and this portion is called the Aitow Hills. The ascertained 

 extent of this moraine in Manitoba, known in successive parts as the Tiger, 

 Brandon, and Aitow hills, is about 125 miles. Its general course is north- 

 west, but within the Souris basin and that of the head streams of the 

 Pembina, on the north side of Turtle Mountain, it is deflected about 25 

 miles to the northeast. The ice-sheet was there indented by two reentrant 

 angles, one having its apex in the range of the Tiger Hills, near Poors 

 Lake, a few miles north of the north end of Pelican Lake, and the other in 

 fhe Brandon Hills. The glacial Lake Souris, dammed by the ice-sheet and 

 probably causing its indentations along the course of this moraine, then 

 filled the Souris basin and outflowed around the south side of Turtle Moun- 

 tain and Devils Lake, being tributary to Lake Agassiz by the Sheyemie.* 



ELEVENTH OR MESABI MORAINE. 



The development of the Mesabi- moraine, and of the foregoing mo- 

 raines, in northeastern Minnesota eastward from the headwaters of the 

 Mississippi River, and the still more northern twelfth or Vermilion moraine, 

 I have described from exploration during the year 1893 for the Geological 

 Survey of Minnesota.^ The Embarras River, in its passage tlu-ough the 

 high granite belt of the Giants or Mesabi Range and the adjoining Mesabi 



' Detailed descriptions of this moraine west of Pelican Lake, on the west part of the Tiger Hills 

 (which the Souris River intersects in a gorge 350 feet deep), and in the Brandon Hills and Arrow Hills, 

 are presented in the Annual Report of the Geol. and Nat. Hist. Survey of Canada, new series, Vol. IV, 

 for 1888-89, pp. 33-36 E. 



^This word, recently often spelled Mesaba, is stated by Rev. J. A. GilfiUan to be the Ojibway 

 name of a giant of immense size who was a cannibal. The Ojibways at Grand Portage, according to ' 

 Prof. N. H. Winchell, represent this giant as buried beneath the hills of the Mesabi Range, the various 

 hills covering different members of his body. (Geol. and Nat. Hist. Survey of Minnesota, Fifteenth 

 Annual Report, for 1886, p. 156.) The Giants Range and Mesabi Range, however, as these names are 

 now applied by Professor Winchell (see the preceding Chapter II, p. 31), are distinctly separate but 

 contiguous and parallel ranges of hills. 



'Geol. and Nat. Hist. Survey of Minn., Twenty-second Annual Report, for 1893 (pub. 1894), pp. 

 45-52, with map. 



MON XXV 12 



