MORAINIC SYSTEMS AT HEADS OF LAKE MICHIGAN AND SAGINAW BASINS. 219 



probable that the water after running across these outwash aprons formed long pools on the 

 inner border of the Kalamazoo system connected by short, slightly channeled stretches, where 

 the stream descended from one pool to another. In Indiana the drainage from the Valparaiso 

 system seems to have been confined to broad, shallow valleys that lead across the high gravel 

 plain (p. ISO). 



DRAINAGE. 



The drainage of the Valparaiso system can perhaps best be outlined from south to north, 

 for the most southerly channels probably came into operation somewhat earlier than the more 

 northerly. 



From the meridian of Valparaiso westward streams which head as far back as the middle 

 and even as the northernmost of the three ridges of that part of the system wind about through 

 small valleys in which there is but little filling by deposits of gravel and sand connected with 

 the retreat of the ice. This portion of the moraine, as already indicated, is clayey in constitu- 

 tion and seems to have had a very weak outwash. The first stream east of Valparaiso, Crooked 

 Creek, occupies one of the broad shallow valleys that leads across the large gravel plain of the 

 upper Kankakee region. Between this valley and Laporte other streams lead across the gravel 

 plain, but they are in small narrow valleys which evidently were not utilized to any great degree 

 by drainage from the Valparaiso system. Little Kankakee Eiver, which heads near the outer 

 border of the Valparaiso system about 5 miles northeast of Laporte, is in a broad shallow valley 

 that apparently received a line of drainage from the Valparaiso system; its bottom lands are 

 covered with a rather fine sandy gravel not so coarse as that forming the bordering gravel 

 plain and suggesting a rather weak drainage. Immediately east of New Carlisle a low plain of 

 sandy gravel, known as Terre Coupee Prairie, heads in the Valparaiso system and leads south- 

 ward to the Kankakee; its material is decidedly finer than that on the higher gravel plain to 

 the west and thus suggests comparatively weak drainage. From Terre Coupee Prairie a narrow 

 strip of sandy gravel extends northward to the bend of St. Joseph River at Buchanan and 

 separates the Valparaiso system from the inner moraine of the Kalamazoo system. This strip 

 is lower than the outwash apron on the eastern side of the inner moraine of the Kalamazoo 

 system, and in places the stream that followed it has cut into the latter. 



In the district between St. Joseph and Paw Paw rivers the Valparaiso system is bordered 

 by an extensive gravel plain thickly set with basins near the edge of the moraine and sloping 

 rapidly southeastward toward Dowagiac River. Its altitude is somewhat above 800 feet at 

 the edge of the morainic system, but is only 760 to 775 feet in the vicinity of Dowagiac River. 

 It is probable that at the time the weak ridge running from Paw Paw northeastward to the 

 Kalamazoo system was occupied by the ice sheet the head of glacial drainage was immediately 

 east of Paw Paw. The waters appear to have followed the swampy channel that leads from 

 Paw Paw to the headwaters of the Dowagiac (see p. 184) and to have entered, near Dowagiac, 

 at an altitude of about 720 feet, Lake Dowagiac, winch extended as far south as South Bend, 

 Ind., where it opened into the head of the Kankakee. This pool appears to have been a few 

 feet lower than the line of glacial drainage from the bend of the Kalamazoo at Buchanan to Terre 

 Coupee Prairie and was probably in the line of main discharge from the ice border between 

 Buchanan and Paw Paw during the development of the extensive outwash apron. 



Though the portion of the ice border between Paw Paw and Kalamazoo River east of the 

 Kendall moraine and of its apparent weak correlative in northwestern Kalamazoo County 

 has not so high an outwash apron as the portion between Paw Paw and Buchanan, yet it has 

 along much of its length a narrow pitted plain standing a little below 750 feet at the southern 

 end of the Kendall moraine and about 775 feet at the place where the weak moraine of north- 

 western Kalamazoo County joins the inner moraine of the Kalamazoo system. The district 

 contains a swampy tract whose altitude is about 30 feet lower than that of the gravel plain; 

 but this, as already indicated, was probably opened by a line of glacial drainage that discharged 

 down the Paw Paw Valley instead of southward to the Kankakee. The outwash apron seems 



