196 W. H. SHERZER 
feet to the mile, from the level of Lake Erie (573 feet A. T.) 
outwards towards the Belmore beach. The evenness of this 
slope is shown in the left half of Fig. 2, although the slope itself 
is much exaggerated by the vertical scale adopted. This Bel- 
more beach, which was made by the waves of glacial Lake Whit- 
tlesey, has a northeast and southwest course in this region, 
parallel with the Detroit River and present beach of Lake Erie 
and some eighteen to twenty-five miles inland. For over three- 
quarters of a century this ‘‘ridge” has been recognized as mark- 
ing a higher stage in the lake waters, but it seems to have been 
the only one which was so recognized. The position of the 
Upper Maumee beach, recently traced by Leverett, is shown 
in Fig. 1, marking the highest limit of glacial waters. The 
elevation of this beach, just west of Ypsilanti, was determined 
during the past summer by the United States Topographical Sur- 
vey as 812 feet, A. T. Between these two beaches there isa 
strip varying in breadth from two to six miles, having an aver- 
age slope upward and outward of twelve to thirty feet to the 
mile. Throughout this narrow strip the topography is more uneven, 
the morainic hills not having been completely obliterated by the 
waters of glacial Lake Maumee, thus testifying to its limited 
breadth in this region, or to its short duration. To the west of 
the Upper Maumee the land becomes markedly morainic, due to 
the crowding together of the various members of the Huron-Erie 
series, which are entirely separate in Ohio and Indiana. Some 
of the knobs in the northwestern part of Washtenaw county 
attain a height of 1,000 to 1,100 feet, A. T. 
Between the Belmore beach (739 feet, A. T.) and the present 
Erie beach there are found three approximately parallel belts of 
sand which mark different stages in the history of glacial Lake 
Warren. In certain sections this sand has been scattered by the 
winds and tossed into dunes, which give some relief to this 
otherwise flat topography. Three small river systems, the Rouge, 
Huron, and Raisin, have been developed since the retreat of the 
ice, and drain this region to the southeast. A few small creeks 
reach the lake and the Detroit River independently. 
