Nordenskiold found that, after getting upon the surface of the 
glacier, the rise was thirty-six feet per mile for the first forty-two 
miles; then at the rate of twenty-six feet for twenty-eight miles ; 
then twenty-two feet for thirty-seven and one-half miles; then 
nineteen feet for fifty miles and finally twenty-two and one-half 
feet for the last seventy-five miles before he turned back. The 
New England landscape, if such it can be called, was then, in 
glacial times, extremely monotonous—an essentially level white 
plane cut here and there by deep crevasses down which the sur¬ 
face rivers precipitated themselves, perhaps three or four thousand 
feet at one leap. 
The effect of this immense mass of moving ice upon the sur¬ 
face of the country is still a question upon which extreme views 
are held. But there is one feature which we unquestionably owe 
to it. I refer to the numerous lakes and lakelets which add so 
much to the beauty of our Northern scenery. The limit of gla¬ 
ciation could be laid down with considerable accuracy on a good 
topographical map by simply drawing a line to separate the lake¬ 
ful from the lake-less region. These lakes were formed, in the 
majority of cases, not by any scooping action on the part of the 
glacier, but by the deposition of drift from the ice valleys, thus 
damming back the water. Since the retreat of the ice the streams 
have been constantly occupied in removing these accumulations 
or in cutting down new channels, and many large lakes, of which 
we are able to trace the shore lines, have already disappeared. 
But the ice age was too recent and the obstructions were too great 
to yet permit a return to complete drainage. 
In some regions, too, the glacier benefited the land from the 
farmer’s point of view. In Northwestern Pennsylvania and 
throughout Ohio the terminal moraine is almost the dividing line 
between cultivated fields and forests. Here the streams south of 
the glacial limits run in narrow ravines, 200 or 300 feet deep, cut 
in the horizontal Waverley and Coal Measure strata. These valleys 
in the glaciated region have been largely filled with drift, which 
covers Northern Ohio to an average depth of over fifty feet. The 
action of the glacier has here changed an almost canon country 
into a rolling one. And in general the glacier seems to have had 
a subduing effect upon the topography. 
