112 
The American Geologist. August, 1903. 
recession of both the Green Bay and Lake .Michigan lobes 
permitted the lakes to meet and merge somewhere northeast 
of lake Winnebago, then assuming the same level and a single 
outlet. Up to that time there were two glacial lakes, and for 
that in the Fox basin I will propose the name Lake Nicolet, 
in commemoration of Jean Nicolet, the earliest explorer of this 
region. Like the glacial lake Dulnth, so called by Taylor 
for the city of Dulnth, this ancient lake outflowing at Portage 
will bear the name of a grand pioneer of European civilization 
who came there and brought to Canada and France a knowl- 
edge of its area and its aboriginal tribes. 
Jean [John] Nicolet is supposed to have been born in or 
near Cherbourg, France, probably in 1598. He came to Can- 
ada in 1 618, and during twenty-four years was a most ener- 
getic and honored agent of the proprietors of Canada for the 
promotion of the fur trade. In the autumn of 1634 he visited 
the Sault St. Marie, and thence came to Green bay, being, as 
was before noted, the first white man known to have visited any 
part of Wisconsin. He died on one of the last days of October, 
1642, drowned by shipwreck on the St. Lawrence river near 
Quebec. This early explorer is to be distinguished from the 
geographer and scientist, Joseph Nicolas Nicollet, who two 
centuries later explored the area of Minnesota and the Da- 
1-otas.* 
Portage, the county seat and chief town of Columbia coun- 
ty, is built on the eastern side of the Wisconsin river where it 
was joined by the old portage course from the Fox valley. 
The northwestern and principal part of the town is 30 to 50 
feet above the river, but its southeastern part is on the low 
a 1 hi vial tract of the portage, subject to occasional overflow by 
the river floods, which thence run north and are tributary to 
lake Michigan. For a mile through the town its upper part is 
terminated against the lowland by an eroded bank or low bluff, 
cut by the outlet of the glacial lake Nicolet. On the lowland, 
near the foot of the bluff, a canal connects the Wisconsin 
* History of the Discovery of the Northwest by John Nicollet in 1634, 
with a sketch of his life, by C. W. Butterfield." (Pages 113; Cincinnati, 
18S1). His surname was sometimes spelled Nicollet. 
See also a biography of the later Nicollet, bv I'rof. N. H Winchell, in 
the American Geologist, vol. viii, pp. 34-3-352, with portrait, Dec, 1891; and 
"Additional Facts about Nicollet," by Horace V. Winchell, ibid., vol. xiii. 
pp. 1 26-128, Feb., 1894-, giving short biographic sketches of both these ex- 
plorers, and correcting a prevalent error concerning the Christian names of 
Joseph Nicholas, before called "Jean N." 
