336 THE GLACIAL LAKE AGASSIZ. 



part of its extent, diminishing at the north to 2 miles. The narrower pro- 

 longation of this tract, known as the Golden Valley, varies from 2 miles to 

 only 1 mile in width along its course of 18 miles to the North Branch of 

 Park River, 1 to 2 miles west of Gardar. Originally the whole length 

 of this belt Avas called the Elk Valley, which seems to be a translation of 

 its aboriginal name; but the name Golden Valley, proposed for its north- 

 ern portion by tlie Ramsey brothers, living at Ramseys Groves, in Vernon 

 Township, has come into universal use for the narrow part of the valley 

 extending thence northward. 



The Golden and Elk valleys have no river now running along their 

 continuous depression. Instead it is crossed by numerous streams which 

 form the Turtle, Park, and Forest rivers, descending from the highland 

 west of Lake Agassiz and finding their way between or through the 

 morainic islands east of the valley. But during the stage in the departure 

 of the ice-sheet when these islands were being accumulated on the western 

 margin of its Minnesota lobe, contemporaneous with the formation of the 

 Leaf Hills and with the completion of the prominent compound moraine 

 south of Devils Lake, a great river flowing from the melting ice-fields and 

 laden with their drift ran with a strong current in this long, nearly straight 

 valley, bringing to its debouchure into Lake Agassiz at McCanna the sand 

 and silt of this delta. A portion of its freight was even borne 35 miles 

 onward in the shallow water of the lake, forming the southern part of the 

 delta, which was probably held to the western side of the lake area by 

 the barrier of this ice-lobe. That the sand and silt were thus supplied 

 chiefly from the englacial drift, and only in small part from erosion by the 

 streams that now exist, is proved by the position of the axial thickest and 

 highest portion of the delta, separated from the western shore of Lake Agas- 

 siz by a broad, shallow depression in which the numerous sources of the 

 Goose River are diverted from their eastward course and carried to the south 

 in a united stream. Whatever alluvium these tributaries have added to the 

 delta, both while the lake was here and since it was withdrawn, has been 

 insufficient to raise their chamiels the small amount that would give them 

 passage across the delta in their normal course toward the east. 



