HAwor tu. | Physiography of Western Kansas. oll 
surface, and that a strip of it extends eastward from this place con- 
tinuously to below Great Bend. The country to the south of Great 
Bend in Edwards, Pratt, Stafford and Reno counties is covered with 
a sandy accumulation strongly resembling the general river sands. 
It would seem that when the river reached the Dakota formation, a 
formation so easily corraded, it immediately began acting upon it 
with great vigor. As the general inclination of the strata of the 
Dakota is to the northeast it follows that a given geologic horizon 
is considerably higher in eastern Ford county than the same one 
in southern Barton county at or near Great Bend. The evidence 
is so striking that it would seem the cause of the river’s great bend 
to the north is the existence of the easily corraded Dakota sand- 
stone. We may therefore believe that at an earlier period in the 
history of the river it passed eastward from Ford county across 
the north of Kiowa, Pratt and Kingman counties, probably passing 
out of the state not far from its present location. 
If this explanation is correct, one can not help inquiring why 
the river did not break through the uplands in the vicinity of Me- 
Pherson county and ultimately join the Cottonwood river through 
Marion and Chase counties. To answer this clearly we only have 
to look at the general geologic character of the southern part of the 
Permian in Butler and Cowley counties to find an adequate reason. 
The great Flint-Hills area described in Volume If of these heports 
has its surface rising to points considerably higher than the main 
uplands of Sumner and Sedgwick counties. Evidently these high 
elevations in the early Tertiary times deflected the river southward 
and prevented it from crossing the Flint-Hills region when the 
drainage was first changed to an easterly direction by the elevation 
of the mountainous area. The same Flint-Hills area has con- 
tinuously remained higher than the uplands in Sumner, Sedgwick 
and adjoining counties. Therefore, with the river once flowing 
out of the state near where it now does it would be impossible for 
it to pass eastward across the Flint-Hills so long as the elevations 
remain as they now are. In the course of its corrasion when it 
finally reached the Dakota sandstone the cutting away of the Dakota 
material would be a natural consequence, and the great bend in the 
river would thus be produced. 
