1889.] Methods and Models in Geographic Teaching. 571 
brought into sight in sailing towards it on the ocean. This broad 
plain is a lake bottom, whence the water in which its fine sedi- 
ments were laid down has been drained away, and drained away 
by so curious a process that if, in teaching modern history, it 
were noted that some existing form of government were as 
curiously related to the past, no teacher would hesitate to make 
reference to it. The northern barrier that held the waters of the 
lake was the southward front-slope of a great sheet of ice that 
for a time obstructed the open northward drainage ; and in the 
lake thus created fine sediments were spread out so plentifully 
that they buried the former surface of the land, and so evenly 
that when the waters were drained away as the ice melted a dead- 
level plain was revealed. 
The plain stands well above sea-level, and hence must suffer 
change as destructive processes attack it. Why then is it so 
smooth ? Manifestly because it is young. There has not yet 
been time for streams to channel it. It is extremely immature, 
truly infantile in its appearance, with scarcely a sign of the 
variety of features that will be developed in its later history. 
Does not this consideration lend additional interest to the study 
of so simple and monotonous a district as the plain of the Red 
River of the North ? Is there not a keener appreciation of its 
peculiarities gained by looking at them in the light of their 
development, instead of describing them simply as absolute forms, 
not otherwise considered. 
The Red River plain has, however, begun its development. 
The Red River itself has incised a narrow, steep-sided trench 
twenty or forty feet deep in the surface of the plain, and the few 
side branches of the river have narrower and shallower channels. 
These trenches and channels are simply young valleys, and they 
are growing so rapidly that their increase in length and width is 
noticeable even in the past few years of settlement. But still 
the streams have barely made a beginning of the great work of 
carrying away all the material of the plain above base-level, this 
being their manifest future task. So little has been done as yet 
in the way of preparing drainage-channels that the ram which 
falls here is greatly delayed in reaching a stream-course by which 
