St. Joseph County, Indiana - Chapter 1: Topography, 1907

Chapter 1: Topography

St. Joseph County, Indiana, is the middle county of the northernmost tier of counties of the state. To the east, in order, are the counties of Ellvhart, LaGrange and Steuben ; to the west, those of LaPorte, Porter and Lake. On the south are the counties of Marshall and Starke ; and on the north is Berrien county, in the state of Michigan. The northern part of the county is in the valley of the St. Joseph, and the southern part in the valley of the Kankakee. From a tiny lake on the summit between the two valleys, and within the corporate limits of the city of South Bend, by a little stream known as Mc- Cartney's Creek, the waters flow to the north- Ward and into the St. Joseph River, and so finally reach the Gulf of St. Lawrence. From a point a little to the south of the same Summit Lake, sometimes called LaSalle Lake, and also Stanfield Lake, the waters flow to the southward and form the source of the Kankakee river, and so, by the Illinois and the Mississippi, reach the Gulf of Mexico. Before reaching South Bend, the St. Joseph also flows in a southwesterly direction through Michigan and Indiana. At South Bend the river turns abruptly north, and flows thence into Lake Michigan.

In a learned and exceedingly interesting paper read before the Northern Indiana Historical Society,^ Dr. Hugh T. Montgomery of South Bend shows very clearly, from an examination of the geological formations extending from Lake Huron and Saginaw Bay, following the valleys of the St. Joseph and Kankakee, that those two great valleys were originally one ; and that, at a remote period, the watei*s of Saginaw Bay flowed through southwestern Michigan and northwestern Indiana, reaching the Mississippi by way of the Illinois River. The broad flood plain marked out in geological ages, and through which flowed the mighty stream, called by Dr. Montgomery the Great Kankakee, may still be traced over the whole region from Saginaw Bay to the Mississippi, passing through the heart of St. Joseph county.

Iii. The Glacial Drift

gan, consists of level or prairie lands ; the average elevation in St. Joseph county being about 875 feet above the sea. The soil, which is exceedingly fertile, is composed chiefly of sand or gravel, clay and loam, with some muck in the Kankakee bottoms. The geological formation is glacial drift, which here lies about two hundred feet in thickness over the bed rock.

This formation, and its origin, are well described by Prof. S. S. Gorby, in the state geological report for the year 1886. The northern half of Indiana, he says, consists of a generally level plain, broken slightly by occasional long, low and broad ridges that form the di^ades between the various water courses. Almost the whole of this region is covered by vast accumulations of transported material, consisting of sand, gravel, bowlders and clay. The general term applied to this accimiulated material is "drift," a term which well indicates its origin. Large volumes of flowing water, and immense masses of slowly moving ice, ar.e recognized as the agents that transported and deposited these vast accumulations of drift. The uninterimpted flow of great volumes of water, and the continued movement of immense masses of ice through long periods of time, resulted in the wearing away of large portions of the original rocks. In some locations the erosions have amounted to hundreds of feet. Whatever elevations had previously occurred in the northern part of the state were leveled by advancing glaciers and flowing waters, and the sites of ancient hills and mountains are now covered by accumulations of the glacial period.

In the same volume of geological reports the gifted Maurice Thompson has given us a fascinating story of the glacial deposits of northern Indiana. From his account we eondense the following statement, indicating the forces that brought about the present condition of the surface and soils of St. Joseph

It has been clearly demonstrated, says Mr. Thompson, that ice in the form of a glacier, no matter how rigid it may appear, has a current similar to that of water. In other words, ice will form a solid stream, so to speak, which will slowly but steadily creep down an inclined plane, and if this ice-stream be very deep, so as to give it great weight, it will overthrow, grind up and bear away whatever obstacle opposes it. Glaciers are formed by the accumulation of snow, which, by pressure and crystalization, is turned into ice. Thus, wherever the snowfall in winter is greater than can be melted in summer, the snow grows deeper year by year until at length by its own weight, and by partial surface melting, it is compressed into a sheet of ice enormously thick. Now if the surface upon which this sheet rests is inclined, the ice flows and we have a glacier. In the Alps there are glaciers from five hundred to over six hundred feet in vertical depth, slowly flowing down the mountain sides. But it does not require steep mountain slopes for the making of glaciers; a comparatively gentle inclination of the surface of the ground is sufficient if the ice be thick enough and other conditions be favorable to motion. The general form of a glacier is that of a wedge, the edge resting on the lowest point of the surface occupied and the thick end resting on the highest point of the same. Of course the motion of a glacial stream A^nll be in some proportion to the slope of this surface, but the thickness of the great end of the wedge must have much to do with the force of the current.

It is well to bear in mind that the ice of glaciers is not identical with ice frozen under ordinary circumstances, nor is the one equivalent to the other. Snow compressed into a mass of glacier ice is not perfectly crystalline and solid, but peculiarly laminated and porous in its texture, capable of absorbing at times a great quantity of water through- out its body, thus admitting of expansion by the very force of congelation. ]\Ioreover, the smallest movement of this sort repeated, at comparatively long intervals, during countless centuries, would thrust a body of ice, no matter how thick, over a long surface distance. Long and careful study of the phenomena of existing glaciers has rasulted in establishing not only the flowing motion of ice, but many of the effects produced thereby, one of the most notable being the moraine matter brought down to the glacier's terminus, or collected along its sides. These masses of moraine matter consist of worn and striated fragments of stone, of all sizes, from giant bowlders down to tiny pebbles and infinitesimal grains of sand, together with earthy matter of great variety. A body of this character collected at the foot of a glacier is called a terminal moraine ; if at the glacier 's side it is called a lateral moraine.

A striking and easily recognized feature of moraine bowlders and pebbles, of whatever size, is the peculiar surface-planing caused by the glacier having dragged or pushed them over other stone surfaces, or the like. These ground and scratched faces, once seen and fixed in the memory, serve to identify glacier stones wherever found, whether the stones be bowlders, pebbles or rocks in places over which the glacier has passed. Indeed, the floor upon which an ice-river has flowed is always engraved with the unmistakable sign manual of the glacier - fine striae parallel with the direction of the current. The movement of a glacier may, and often does, load the ice-surface with stones, dust and other detritus, either by ploughing under the same, or by receiving them as they fall from the slopes on the side.

At the close of what geologists call the Tertiary age, there came a great change in the earth 's atmospheric temperature, by which a large part of the northern hemisphere was subjected to a frigidity quite as great, perhaps, as that which now exists in the arctic regions. This polar condition crept on slowly until at length the desolation of almost unbroken snow and ice reigned supreme. Whax length of time was required to bring about this climatic change can only be conjectured. Enough evidence appears, however, to make it quite certain that a sub-tropical temperature, and a faima and flora supported thereby, were banished from our hemisphere, while a boreal winter set its grip of ice upon everything. Snow accumulated year by year, and centuiy by century, until its own weight compressed the mass into glaciers of scarcely imaginable thickness and area, and beside which the ice-fields of Greenland are insignificant. As the winter grew colder and colder, the summer grew feebler, and there is plenty of evidence showing that a boreal fauna and flora crept far southward to usurp the places of those animals and plants that had formerly flourished in a balmy air and a wami, kind soil.

Throughout the drift area the physical features vary but little. Above the striated floorrocks, the worn and peculiarly flattened bowlders and pebbles, the heaps and ridges of sand and gravel, and the vast mass of bluish clay, or till, accompany the glacial matter and make almost the whole of its bulk. In America the drift lies over a vast irregular area, as yet very indefinitely outlined in the north, but pretty accurately defined along the southern boundary. From the highlands of Canada an enormous glacier, or rather series of glaciers, descended into the region south of the Great Lakes, overwhelming with moraine matter a large part of the United States, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. An examination of this drift or moraine matter shows it to consist, in a large degree, of silicious debris, brought from a region of granite, gneiss, greenstone, quartzite and various other metamorphic or igneous rocks quite foreign to the area covered by tlie mass. Nor is it difficult to see, in a general way, that mucli of this matter has been transported from the Canadian highlands, where the granitic and other crvstalline rocks are found in place,

The mass of matter, very appropriately named Glacial Drift, which is probably the most important, and certainly the least understood geological feature of Indiana, is in the form of an irregular wedge, its thick end to the north, its edge, or thin end, to the south. Of course this description is of the most general nature, but we must bear in mind the peculiar shape and position of the mass in order to have a ready understanding of its particular features. Taking this vast wedge of matter, then, and beginning our examination in the neighborhood of its southern limit, or edge, we find it more or less obscurely outlined and its constituent parts passing by insensible gradations into the clays formed of decomposed rocks. Proceeding northward, mere superficial observation discovers that the drift mass grows thicker and an occasional bowlder is seen, while here and there a bed of smooth gravel appears along with deposits of sand. Upon examination the bowlders prove to be rounded, scoured and scratched blocks of granite, gneiss, greenstone and other igneous or metamorphic rocks, and the pebbles of the gravel are simply minute bowlders of the same materials. The sand, when carefully studied, appears to be composed mostly of particles of quartz, feldspar, mica and other silicious crystals, evidently the result of a grinding up of igneous rocks.

Bluish or smoky gray colored clay is next discovered and at once becomes the chief component of the drift mass, growing thicker, step by step, as we go northward, save where water and other agents have thinned or removed it. Another very notable fact is the increase in the number of bowlders apace with our progress toward the northern end of the wedge. This gray-blue clay, or bowlder till, is a mass of pulverized rock sometimes quite appreciably calcareous, but often almost wholly silicious, as if it were a grist of granite rocks ground between some monstrous upper and nether millstone and poured out upon the surface of our state. From middle Indiana northward ridges and hills of gravel and sand, and vast accumulations of bowlders, appear at irregular intervals. Sand, heaped in hillocks and eccentric waves, covers a large area in the northern ciuarter of the state. Under all this, however, lies the bowlder till, or blue-gray clay, Avhich grows thicker gradually, in a general way, as we approach the northern limit.

Nearly all the principal valleys of Indiana lie so that their water-flow is from northeast to southwest, and are trenches cut by some agency, not only through the drift mass, but often through parts of the underlying paleozoic rocks as well. Leading into these vallevs from all directions smaller streams cut the land surface into irregular areas, and expose very interesting sections of the drift mass. Along most of the water courses, large and small, the glacial materials have been assorted at certain points and re-arranged in terraces of stratified sand, gravel and water-worn fragments of stone. In the northern part of the state, especially between Lake Michigan and the southern limits of the Kankakee and Yellow River valleys, the bowlder clay has a large number of deep basins filled with water, forming beautiful little lakes.

Wherever streams of water have worn deep channels into the drift, and wherever w^ells have been sunk into or through the same, there have been disclosed marked peculiarities of deposition. In cutting through the bowlder clay, which is usually a most solid and refractory substance, strata or intercalated beds of gravel and sand are found, not in persistent sheets but usually lenticular, that is, double convex lens form, or in some other eccentric form of deposition, curiously gripped in the surrounding clay. Some of these sand and gravel masses would seem of great extent, however, serving as vast sponges to hold the water caught between the beds of imper\nous clay. All through the drift mass bowlders of every size, from tons in weight to pebbles of the size of a pea, are found, having worn faces whose striae are usually parallel to their longer axes. In many places the deposits are curiously curved and otherwise contorted, a condition which shows very plainly wherever the clay, gravel and sand are stratified to some extent. Bowlder clay is quite variable in the relative proportion of its constituents. While many sections show homogeneous gray or bluish clay, with only here and there pebbles and bowlders, other sections disclose almost every degree of mixture between pure clay, obscurely stratified gravel beds and so-called bowlder dykes. The farther we go north in Indiana, speaking with reference to a general average, the greater becomes the admixture of bowlders, pebbles and angular fragments of rock in the clay, especially toward its surface, and the more extended become the intercalated strata of sand and gravel ; while, at the same time, the number of basins containing water increases, both at the surface and within the mass. The drift appears in places to be parted by a stratum, or strata, of ancient soil, in which are found vegetable remains more or less preserved, consisting of tree-trunks, branches and roots, belonging to what have been large forest trees.

One striking feature of the superficial deposits of the drift is the situation of the cleanest gravel on the north side of the hills and ridges. In fact, it is a rule, with comparatively few exceptions, that a section dra^\'n north and south through a drift hill will disclose the coarse gravel and bowlders heaped in a more or less w^edge-shaped mass against the north or northeastern side of the elevation, the rest of which will be sand and clay. Furthermore, beginning with the northmost line of the section, the coarsest part of the gravel will come first, and its pebbles will grow finer as you pass southward across the cutting until it becomes sand, and you find the clay against which it lies. Of couree this is not always the case, and many modifications of the rule will be discovered, owing to recent or comparatively recent erosions and other disturbances ; but every observer will admit the larger fact to be the rule itself. Even where conical hills or knobs of gravel are found, as is often the case, standing quite isolated on our level table lands, a section of each will a-enerallv show a gradation in the gravel, the pebbles diminishing in size along a line from north to south, or from northeast to southwest, the south side passing into sand.

Between practically horizontal sheets of the bowlder clay of Indiana, basins or underground lakes of fresh water exist in many places, and when tapped by borings the water will often flow as an artesian fountain above the surface. This well-known feature is the best proof of the impermeable nature of the clay, and is of peculiar interest in connection with a study of the manner in which our drift has been deposited. These underground pockets of water are, as a i*ule, similar in every way to the smaU deep lakes that dot the surface of northern Indiana, save that the subterranean basins have been filled with sand and gravel in which the water is held, as in a sponge. Cross sections of the terraces along our rivers show a simple enough rearrangement of drift materials caused by the action of the water, as the streams gradually decreased in volume, subsequent to the withdrawal of the glaciers, while the loess, bluff or lacustral deposits indicate the bottoms of comparatively recent fresh water lakes over a large area of our state.

The cuttings of the old Louisville and New Albany railroad, from New Albany on the Ohio river to Michigan City on Lake Michigan, give a key to many of the most interesting problems connected with the drift. As we follow this line from the southern to the northern border of the state, we may note how, from a fringe of doubtful glacial debris, the mass of superimposed materials thickens over the rocks in place, until at length the excavations no longer reach deep enough to sever the bowlder clay. It requires no prae- ticed eye to recognize the flat, monotonous consistently with, and, so to speak, parallel billows of the glacial table-lands as soon as with the great glacial movements, they are reached. The whole country, from In the study of the surface and subtevwithin thirty miles of the Ohio river to the raneous waters of the drift, the following valley of the Kankakee, presents the appear- facts are readily noted: ance of having been heaved into long low 1st. Springs of water rising vertically, or waves ; but erosion, in fact, and not upheaval, practically so, from drift deposits usually has formed this rolling surface, and each bil- come from a great depth, and are more or low is found to be simply a barrier of drift less impregnated with the salts of iron and between two drainage beds. Another feature other mineral impurities, of the drift is not easily observable, save by 2nd. Flowing wells whose waters come the use of the level or the barometer. It is from natural reservoirs in the drift clay are a series of waves or swells of the surface, usually strongly impregnated with iron which made on a grand scale, and running, in a oxidizes upon exposure to the an*, general way, east and west without any ap- 3rd. Wells bored or dug in the drift, and parent reference to the valleys of erosion, whose Avater does not rise in the bore, are, as These waves or swells are due to what may a rule, comparatively free from iron and other be called forward or backward steps of the mineral impurities, but may occasionally conglacier or glaciers during the vacillations of tain impurities of a vegetable origin, climate between the beginning and the end In connection with these facts, it has been of the ice period. observed that, in certain localities, gas generated by decomposing vegetable matter has V. LAKES AND SUBTERRANEOUS WATERS. ^ceu met with in the drift. This, indeed,

As already stated, lenticular beds of sand Avould be expected where forests lie moulderand gravel, strata of ancient soil and pockets ing in the grip of the clay. But the sudden glacial theory. At first glance it would seem The question has been asked, how can it quite impossible to account for a stratum of be that a glacier, or any number of successive soft black muck and loam found intercalated glaciers, could have formed in the body of its between thick beds of drift clay, especially deposits these pouches of water, these strata when this soil contains roots, branches and of soil and vegetable matter, and these lenseven trunks of trees showing little evidence of shaped intermediate pockets of sand and any crushing or grinding force such as we gravel? The most usual, and withal, the most must look for in connection with the glacial plausible answer is the general one which acaction. This soil and muck, deep buried counts for these features of the drift by asunder a vast mass of the clay, .and resting on suming that there have been many advances another mass equally thick, cannot be the and retreats of the great ice-flood over the result of a mere accident, but must be due area of our glacial deposits, and that the sortto some law. So, with regard to the beds ing action of water, the glacial movements and of sand and gravel and the subterranean lakes their attending accidents, have given the grand of the drift; they owe their origin to per- mass its peculiarity of composition. Such infectly explicable and normal forces acting tense and prolonged cold as would attend the formation of ice thick enough to fill the conditions of the great glacial problem, would freeze the crust of the earth to the solidity of adamant many feet deep. We are not left to mere reasoning or conjecture in this. In many northern regions the earth is now frozen to a great and unknown depth. It could not be otherwise. If thirty or forty days of weather with the temj)erature varying between the freezing point and ten degrees below zero will solidify the ground to a depth of two feet, as is often the case now in our state, how deep would continuous boreal winter for many centuries solidify it? When the glacial period began in Indiana, no tertiary deposits had been laid down upon our carboniferous rocks, for there is no good evidence of the tertiary formations here. The fauna of the carboniferoiLs seas consisted of marine forms, and in a large degree the genera were those having a very deep water habitat. As the sea became shallow, at length the marine life disappeared. At the beginning of the ice age, there must have existed in Indiana the broken remnants, so to speak, of the carboniferous sea - a sea at that time full of sandy, desolate islands, upon which, in places, a scant vegetation may have begun to appear. Far northward, the mountains of Canada were already covered with snow, and year by year a boreal temperature was creeping southward, on account of a far withdrawal of the deep seas and great changes in their climate-controlling currents. It is not probable that those Canadian mountains were very high ; indeed, they must have been low enough to be finally overwhelmed by the awful iaccumulations of snow and ice north of them, for it is plain that the great glacier flowed over them instead of simply running down their sides. It is impossible to determine how often the ice has flowed over and retreated from the area now covered by the drift, but there is the best evidence that the alterations have been many, and between a great extreme of cold on the one hand and a sub-arctic temperature on the other. In other words, while the frigidity during glacial action was incalculably powerful, the intervals of recession were, as a rule, far from tropical, as we now understand the word.

Let us try to get a view of the surface condition of our drift area after the withdrawal of the first great glacial agent. The highlands of Canada have been largely demolished, the basins of the lakes have been scooped out of the paleozoic rocks and are filled with solid masses of ice covered over with glacial debris, and the surface of northern Indiana is covered with an immense drift deposit. We have said that the great lake basins were left full of solid ice, when the glacier had retreated far northward, and that the surface of this ice was covered with a coating of drift material. The same statement is applicable to innumerable small basins left in the glacial clay, just such basins, in fact, as the retreat of the last glacier left filled with ice and covered with sand, gravel and bowlders, and which latter basins are now the beautiful little lakes of northern Indiana. But how, if these basins were solidly filled with ice, did they come to be covered with a layer of sand, gravel and bowlders? The question is easily answered. As the foot of the great glacier receded northward a constant flow of water was caused by its melting, the washing force of which carried forward fine sand and gravel, and also icebergs loaded with morainic matter, all of which was distributed over the surface upon which the water flowed. It is apparent, from the very nature of things, that a vast deep basin, in the frozen crust of the earth, filled with a solid lump of ice, would be very slow to melt, and that the glacier overlying it w^ould retreat on the line of the basin's rim and leave a great toAver of ice, in the form of a cone, marking the site. This cone would melt down to the basin's level and then the currents from the still retreating glacier would flow across it, depositing its sand, gravel, bowlders and rock fragments. Then we have the following conditions : The crust of the earth is frozen to a profound depth below the ice which fills the lake basins, while upon the ice is deposited a thick mass of drift material, transported there by water and icebergs. One instantly sees how great a time it would require to melt a vast cake of ice under such conditions. Indeed, before this melting was accomplished the glacier returned and flowed over the whole area again. But the very circumstances which caused a return of the glacier necessarily operated to re-congeal such parts of the drift as had been thawed, so that the surface over which the second glacier flowed was rendered as hard as were the paleozoic rocks upon whose surface it first cut its lasting autograph. This mass of sand, gravel and bowlder-clay, frozen to adamantine solidity, must have been a very refractory substance for a glacier to grind down. Indeed, the second glacier had a more stubborn material to overcome than had the first. So we can readily see how each retreat of the glacier left deep basins full of ice in the surface of the drift, and how each return of the glacier buried these basins of ice deep under another mass of clay. Hence, all through the grand body of our glacial deposits, we find the hermetically sealed pockets of water which represent the imprisoned icecakes now melted in the buried basins. The lenticular beds of sand and strata of soil and muck are to be accounted for upon the same grounds. When the time between the retreat and the return of the glacier was long enough, vegetation was generated upon favored areas of the drift, and a soil was formed which, if on low places, w^as covered up when again the glacier appeared.

In order to illustrate the theory above set forth, let us take Lake ]\Iaxinkuckee as an example and suppose that there should come a return of the great glacier from the direction of the northeast. We nnist remember that before this could happen a long period of intense cold would have to prepare the way by freezing solid all the lakes and rivers and the earth's crust to a great depth. Maxinkuckee would be congealed from surface to bottom, and the great glacier, creeping down from its source, and scraping and ploughing the granite-like, frozen surface of the ground, would bury the beautiful little lake deep under a mighty mass of moraine clay, sand, gra\'el and bowlders, where it would remain unmelted until the temperature of the surrounding earth rose above freezing point, when it would slowly turn to water and become, not an underground lake, but, by the processes of pressure and solution, a subterraneous mass of so-called water-bearing clay or water sands.

Evidently there were long spaces of time in the glacial age during which the ice neither advanced nor retreated, but was held in arrest. No doubt when an advance followed such a pause the glacier overrode its hard frozen terminal moraine, and in this way left large masses of trees and other matter buried in an uncrushed state, for at every step we must constantly bear in mind the arctic intensity of the cold during these periods of accumulation. The immense volume of sand which is thrown out of our lakes, even the smaller ones, is proof of the fact that, during the time they were frozen solid, their surface was covered with a coat of drift which sank when the ice melted.

But the question arises : Why are the waters of flowing wells and deep springs, that have their reservoirs in the drift, nearly always impregnated wdth salts of iron or other mineral impurities, while the waters of wells that do not flow are usually comparatively pure ? The answer must be that flowing wells and springs presuppose, in a general way, that their reservoirs are fed from the surface by filtration through permeable parts of the drift, and that the water takes up the iron and other minerals from the material through which it passes, w^hile the water in wells that are unflowing is not furnished from the surface, or any higher strata of sand and gravel, but really is water from imprisoned ice melted in the body of the drift clay. Of course not all flowing wells are iron water, nor impreg- nated to a great degree with other minerals ; but that is the rule. The fact suggests itself, in this connection, that all the porous beds of sand and gravel, intercalated between masses of the drift clay, were probably full of water, in a frozen state, when they were buried. It must not be understood, however, that this explanation is sufficient to compass all the conditions under which water is found in the drift, but it does seem quite applicable to many special problems in that connection which heretofore have not been solved satisfactorily.

Vi. Moraines And Waterways

The foregoing account, showing the probable origin of our lakes and underground waters, as also of the solid ingredients of the drift upon which we are located, is applicable not only to St. Joseph county but also to the greater part of northern Indiana. To Dr. Montgomery's very able paper, already referred to, we are indebted for the following review of the action of the last glacier, resulting in the existing moraines, hills, rivers and valleys going to make up the present surface of St. Joseph county.

During the earlier part of the quaternary geological period, as Dr. ]\Iontgomery tells us, the crust of the earth was subject to varied and wide-spread oscillations, elevations and depressions. Elevations were most marked in higher latitudes, and on our own continent through the north central part, comprising Labrador, the Canadas and the great lake region. These oscillations were attended w^ith great changes in climate, the elevated regions being subject to extreme cold. The territories immediately north of us were elevated from two to three thousand feet, and from continued snowfall during a long period of time became covered with ice to a depth of from tive to ten thousand feet. This frozen mass was known as the great Continental icesheet, and extended south near Cincinnati to a point a few miles below the Ohio river. From this point the lower border of the ice-sheet took a northeasterly and northwesterly course. The cause of the great glacial epoch is not fully understood. But we know that even in our own day, the surface of the earth, in places, is subject to slow but constant changes in elevation and depression; and it is clear that the elevation referred to Avas in itself a strong factor in the production of a severer climate. This climatic condition was favorable to continued snows which lasted through long ages. The short summer suns had little effect in dissipating the snows, but was sufficient to reduce the vast snow-field to glacial ice. As the mass began to pile up to thousands of feet in thickness, the known glacial movements began and the great ice flow started southward. The ice mass being of great Aveight, and frozen solidly to the surface upon which it rested in its slow motion onward, carried or dragged everything movable with it, and scoured, grooved and polished every surface over which it passed, leveling and pushing forward all loose material found in its pathway. The great creases or channels in the surface rock produced by stream erosion were partly obliterated by glacial erosion and partly filled up by glacial rubbish. As the ice-sheet approached and passed into the great lakes its lower margin became lobated and each lobe took a course largely in the direction of the lake valleys, but as these lobes emerged they began to coalesce, forming again an almost unbroken front, pushing onward to the south loaded with bowlders, gravel, sand and clay. As the ice-sheet moved on it approached a warmer climate until the loss by melting at the south equalled the production from the north and caused the ice border to remain stationaiy for unknown years. From this line the ice yielded up its waters which rolled onward to the sea through the great central waterway, the Mississippi.

Under the weight of the ice, thousands of feet in thickness and extending over a wide territory, or from some other cause, the crust of the earth began to settle, and a depression from twelve to fifteen hundred feet below our present level was reached. This is known as the Champlain epoch. As a consequence a milder climate prevailed and the ice withdrew to the north, leaving its load of earthy material strewn over the surface. The recession was slow and interrupted, and at times stationary, the glacier laying down moraine ridges and broken ranges of hills, until finally the ice border lay north of the great lakes. The melting of this receding mountain of ice produced great floods and mighty streams. In our region the waters were carried to the south by four great channels, the Ohio, the Wabash, the Kankakee and the Desplaines. Any of these streams was larger than the Mississippi of today. The flood plain of the Mississippi itself was then formed as we now find it, thirty miles in breadth.

The time which elapsed after the surface was laid down by the withdrawal of the first ice-sheet, is measured by so long a period of aerial and aqueous erosion that hills and ridges were leveled and the lakes filled with sediment and vegetation. During this Champlain epoch, or period of depression, the surface abounded in shallow pools, swamps and lagoons. Drainage was slow and interrupted, with a general inclination to a leveling of the surface. The great gorges and stream channels that had been eroded during the period of elevation were filled with river drift. Forests again covered the uplands and peat bogs filled the depressions, all again to be crushed, ground and scraped from the surface by the last ice advance.

Vii. The Great Kankakee

Sec. 1. - Three Great Ice Lobes. - We now come to the culmination of the phj^sical energies which gave us the present surface contour of St. Joseph county. The conditions necessary to produce a humid atmosphere and great snowfalls were again present. Over the regions north of the great lakes the mass of snow and ice began again to accumulate until it reached thousands of feet in thickness, and from its own weight began to move as a tenacious, semi-liquid mass. As it approached and entered the great lake basins its onward movement was directed largely by the trend or direction of their basins. The Maumee or Erie lobe took a west southwest course. The lobe passing through the Huron basin made its exit in part from the southwest margin through that part of the basin known as Saginaw Bay. The lobe that entered the Lake Michigan basin passed almost directly south. When we speak of the direction of the several lobes we refer to their axes, as the ice movement in those great basins was forward and to either side, radiating in an advance direction from a common center. The Saginaw lobe was a long wedge-shaped mass, hemmed in on the west by the mighty Michigan lobe and on the east receiving the full force of the Mamnee or Erie mass. A part of the Saginaw lobe passed out at the foot of the basin and commingled its ice and load of earth and bowlders with the Erie lobe. From this fact we find drift material from Lake Superior and the northern Huron regions, such as drift copper and porphyry conglomerate, scattered over Indiana and Ohio. This may also account for the very heavy deposit of drift over the northeastern counties of Indiana, Avhere it attains a depth in places of from four to five hundred feet.

These ice tongues or lobes, after emerging from their basins maintained their lobate characteristics, yet were united one with another. The most southerly line reached by the ice during this last movement was comparatively but a few miles below the great lakes, where it remained for a long period. The ice advancing with its load of earthy refuse from the north melted away as rapidly as it advanced to this line and laid down its burden of accumulated material, forming great ranges of hills or moraines, both terminal and lateral, definitely marking the outline of each glacial lobe. After the summers began again to predominate over the winters the ice gradually withdrew to the north and disappeared from this local it v. North of the terminal moraine marking the farthest advance of the iee-sheet will be found almost all of our small inland lakes, the distinguishing mark of beauty of this locality. The former lakes which once dotted the older glaciated surface had long before been carried away by erosion or filled up with silt. Before the coming of this last ice the surface soil of Indiana was composed of clay and fine sand, with lime, slate and sandstone pebbles; no granite bowlders or pebbles at that time were present. It was entirely through the agency of the last ice-sheet that they were carried from the north and spread over this locality. The Maumee or Erie ice lobe advanced from the Lake Erie basin in a southwesterly course, and the border of the lobe entered Indiana at the northeast corner of Elkhart county and took a westerly course through the northerly part of Elkhart and St. Joseph counties to a point about five miles west of South Bend Avhere it began to angle to the south through the western part of the county and continued along the Avestern borders of Marshall and Fulton counties and on to the Wabash river at Logansport. The withdrawal of the ice-sheet from this line and the depositing of its earthy and stony contents mark the age of the lofty range of hills lying south of Mishawaka and South Bend. To the west, the Lake Michigan lobe filled its basin and extended east from thirty to forty miles beyond the present shore line, where it curved southwest around the southeast corner of the lake. It overlapped the northwest corner of St. Joseph county and approached near to the city limits of South Bend. The highlands along the north bank of the Kankakee valley, Portage Prairie and the uplands west of the city of Niles mark the eastern or southeastern border of the Michigan ice lobe. The Saginaw glacier advanced from the Huron basin, pushed south between the Michigan and Maumee or Erie glaciers and reached a point one mile northeast of South Bend, its moraine commencing about one mile east of Notre Dame and a little south, forming the range of hills beginning at that point and extending in a general northeasterly direction, passing near Dowagiac, Decatur and Lawton, Michigan, and terminating west and north of Saginaw Bay. This range of hills marks the western and part of the southern terminal moraine of the Saginaw glacier, its eastern arm and part of its southern arm having been eroded and washed away by the great Kankakee river. From this outline of the glacial borders, it will be noticed that the city of South Bend is located where three great ice lobes met, the Maiunee or Erie, the Saginaw and the Michigan. These great lobes here marked their existence by massive accumulations, forming rugged and permanent ranges of hills and uplands which fix the contour of the landscape in St. Joseph county perhaps forever.

Sec. 2. - The Ancient Waterways. - This brings us to the ancient waterways of our county. The melting of the vast fields of ice brought on great floods and torrential streams. South Bend and St. Joseph county being peculiarly located as to the three glaciers, were also peculiarly located as to ancient streams. Where the busy city now lies nestling in a beautiful valley, partly surrounded by hills, a wonderful river once flowed, a stream three miles wide and one hundred feet or more in depth, moving from east to west. From the north also a great tributary, whose mouth was three miles wide, emptied its waters into the main stream within the present limits of the city of South Bend. If a man could have stood upon the hilLs of Rum Village, just south of the city, a vast panorama of water would have met his gaze. To the northeast, a flood from five to six miles in width and extending up the valley as far as the eye could reach, would have been seen, passing at his feet and rolling onward to the southwest, confined only by the hills on the north and on the south. To the northwest, he would perceive a tributary stream entering the great flood, three miles in width and limited in the line of vision onlj^ by the horizon. And if a man today should stand on the same hills of Rum Village, or on those to the south of the city of Mishawaka, or upon Lowell Heights, or upon any other highlands on either side of the great valley, he could still see the broad bed, miles in width, through which the ancient river once flowed. The great stream was the Kankakee of that day, which had its origin at the foot of the Saginaw glacier and received its tributaries from the Maumee and the Michigan glaciers. The great Kankakee was the outlet for the waters flowing southwest from Lake Huron, through Saginaw Bay. We know that this valley served as a waterway during the withdrawal of the first ice-sheet from the fact that its channel was silted up like all other valleys during the Champlain epoch, or age of depression. It was never re-excavated to any extent, and remains today a filled valley. It is probable that the Kankakee valley also carried the waters flowing from the northeast during the advance of the last glacier; but, soon after the withdrawal of this ice-sheet began, the waters found an outlet into Lake Michigan, leaving the Kankakee valley at the point where South Bend now stands, and passing to the lake through the large tributary already referred to. The old valley of tlie great Kankakee extends from a point in Illinois where the present Kankakee and the Desplaines unite, northeasterly through Illinois, Indiana and Michigan to the watershed between the streams flowing into Saginaw Bay and the headwaters of the present St. Joseph river. The St. Joseph now flows southwesterly through this old Kankakee channel to South Bend, and there turns abruptly north and reaches Lake Michigan at the city of St. Joseph. The valley of the Kankakee was the chief outlet to Lake Huron during glacial times, as the Wabash valley was Lake Erie. The flood plain, where once flowed this mighty Kankakee, varies in width from three miles at its narrowest point, which is one mile below South Bend, to about twenty at its broadest, which is between Porter and Lake counties on the north and Newton and Jasper on the south. The southeasterly bank of the valley, from about six miles below South Bend to its source, near Saginaw Bay, is from fifty to one hunded feet high, while the northwesterly bank, from South Bend to the same point, is generally low and shelving. From South Bend down the valley to the Illinois line, that is, from the point where the great stream emerged, between the Maumee and Michigan moraines, to its confluence with the Desplaines, the banks are low, generally not exceeding fifteen or twenty feet in height. On the southeasterly side of the old channel will be found quite an extensive sandy flood plain, extending from the border of the Maumee moraine southwestward. covering almost the entire surface of Starke county together with the northern part of Pulaski, Jasper and Newton counties. On the north the main channel largely borders on the Michigan moraines.

Second. The stream, just beyond the present Illinois line, crossed the arched bed rock which extends in a northwesterly course across Indiana into Illinois. Near the present site of Momence, Illinois, this rocky ridge produced a well marked rapids, similar to that in the Ohio river near Louisville, which tended to dam the waters and cause them to overflow a wide territory above and causing this region to appear today as if a great lake had occupied the territory.

The principal tributaries of the great Kankakee were the Elkhart and Yellow rivers, draining from the Maumee glacier, also the Tippecanoe at the point where it enters the southeast corner of Starke countv: besides, the stream here called the great Dowagiac, now represented by the Dowagiac creek, which heads south of Kalamazoo, but whose ancient waters probably accumulated far north of that point, gathering from the slope of the eastern lateral moraine of the Michigan glacial lobe. Those waters formed a mighty glacial river, flowing south to a point three miles north of Niles, Michigan, where it received a tributary which had opened a way through the lateral Michigan moraine and discharged its waters from the Michigan basin before these waters had found an opening to the south between the Michigan icelobe and its moraine. The great Dowagiac, after receiving these overflow waters from the Lake ^Michigan basin, continued south and emptied into the Kankakee at the present site of the city of South Bend.

The old channel of the Dowagiac where that stream emptied into the Kankakee is three miles wide, with well defined banks rising from fifty to seventy-five feet above tb(^ l)ed of the valley, which had been cut to bed rock and silted up about one hundred and twenty feet, leaving the above mentioned banks vet remaininR-. These great streams, the Kankakee and the Dowagiac, existed for long periods of time. They conveyed the glacial waters during the advance of the icesheet, also during the period that it stood at its most advanced point and during its withdrawal, until the Michigan ice-lobe had sufficiently receded to allow the waters along its eastern border to escape through the Desplaines opening. This escape by the Desplaines promoted a rapid lowering of the watei*s between the ice-lobe and its lateral moraine and terminated the flow of waters from the Michigan basin into the Dowagiac river, leaving a broad, water-worn plain leading from the Dowagiac river back northwesterly to Lake Michigan.

Sec. 3. - Origin op the St. Joseph River. - Here began a system of river robbing, if we may call it so. The Dowagiac, at a point just below Niles, doubled upon itself at an angle of forty-five degrees, followed the abandoned channel of its former tributary and discharged its waters into Lake Michigan; leaving in turn, a well worn channel from three to four miles wide and thirteen miles long leading to the great trunk stream, or Kankakee, at South Bend. The distance from South Bend, the point where the Dowagiac had formerly emptied its waters into the great Kankakee, to St. Joseph, IMichigan, is thirty-eight miles, with a fafl of one hundred and forty-one feet. From South Bend to Momence, Illinois, the distance is ninetytwo miles with a fall of ninety-three feet. It can be readily understood that with the first annual flood a part of the waters of the Kankakee would follow the abandoned Dowagiac channel, from South Bend to Niles, there mingle with the Dowagiac in its new route and pass onward into Lake Michigan, at the city of St. Joseph. The fall over the new route being three and a half times greater than over the old, the new channel would rapidly cut through the old river deposit, finally taking all the waters of the once mighty Kankakee, and leaving the valley from South Bend to the Desplaines a geological monument to tell of the eternal past.

A physical force which most likely aided in turning the current of the Kankakee into the channel of the Dowagiac, and so forming the stream known to us as the St. Joseph, resulted from an ice gorge formed seven miles below South Bend, where a point of land jutting out from the Michigan moraine, and now called Crum's Point, extends into the valley proper two miles and a half in an almost transverse direction. Just below this point we find an ancient flood plain two miles wide which was supplied with overflow water from the basin of Lake Michigan, but which overflow entirely subsided when the waters of the lake receded from the rim of this basin. This valley, extending to and including the beautiful Terrc Coupee Prairie, is now drained by a small nieandering stream known as Grape- vine creek, the remnant of a once mighty glacial river. Strong and pronounced evidences of an ice gorge or dam having formed at Crum's Point and extended up the river to the mouth of the old Dowagiac at South Bend are yet plainly visible from the scouring, leveling and erosion of morainic hills on the south, and by a chain of lakes and lake beds on the north, the latter connected by a gorge with the glacial stream aforesaid. Evidences of the gorge are also found at the head and north of the ice dam, which passed well up above the mouth of the Dowagiac, east and north of which the Avaters pouring around this dam into the Dowagiac valley excavated an interrupted channel or chain of depressions. These depressions are linear, extending from southeast to northwest, being from one-fourth to three-fourths of a mile long, twenty to forty feet deep and from two hundred to four hundred yards wide, with sharp and well-defined banks. They all show evidences of having been filled with water for a long period of time. All have become dry except the lower two, the Notre Dame lakes, which contain from twenty to thirty feet of water at present. This channel or chain of depressions extends from near Mishawaka, northwesterly, to a point on the St. Joseph river one mile north of South Bend, a distance of four miles and a half. When the ice-dam gave way the waters abandoned those circuitous or temporary routes and returned to their former channels; only the smaller part, however, continuing down the old Kankakee, while the larger body moved along the new route through the Dowagiac channel to Lake Michigan. The fall by the latter way being three and a half times greater than by the former, a channel sufficient to carry the entire body of water w^as soon eroded. A bluff twelve to fourteen feet high, formed at firat as a sandbar from sediment supplied by what is now known as the Wenger creek, extended in a diagonal direction across the old Kankakee bed and parallel to the new current until it reached the opposite bank, Avhen the great Kankakee valley was sealed forever, and the upper stream became a distinct river, the beautiful St. Joseph as we know it. The sandbar or bluff referred to, and which thus finally sealed up the valley of the great Kankakee, is the shelf or hill extending diagonally from southeast to northwest, through the City of South Bend, on the west side of the St. Joseph. Tippecanoe place is built on the edge of this bar, which was well known to our early settlers as the Bluff. This ridge, while originally built up as a sandbar by sediment from the creek, was increased in height by erosion as the new St. Joseph cut into its bed.

Long before those great stream changes had taken place, the swift current of the Dowagiac had carried down large quantities of gravel, and as the gravel-laden waters came in contact with the waters of the Kankakee the velocity of the former was checked and the gravel was laid dow^n on the west bank where the current remained the swiftest. This gravel bed extends north of the city limits of South Bend, down the west bank of the St. Joseph, a distance of three or four miles, and is about one-half mile in width. It forms the eastern slope or border of Portage Prairie. The bed has been sounded in a number of places and found to be from forty to fifty feet in depth, and all smOoth, rounded, water- worn gravel; placing at the city's gates an inexhaustible supply of finest road gravel. The Dowagiac hurling its great volume of water against the current of the Kankakee, also had the effect of slowing the latter stream and causing it to deposit its heavier material ; which we find stored away in the form of acres of river gravel at Twin Branch, just east of Mishawaka. The east side of the Dowagiac near its mouth was much more obstructed than the west, and consequently the gravel and coarser material were slowly laid down farther above and only the finer material was carried down to the mouth, where it was laid down in great quantities of sand, forming Lowell Heights.

If a careful examination is made of the sand on these heights, numerous small particles of coal will be found, indicating that the Saginaw glacier had cut deep into the surface and uncovered in places the coal fields of Michigan and mingled their contents with the drift.

The great Kankakee river, from its source near Saginaw Bay, took a southwesterly course to its junction with the Desplaines, forming with the latter the Illinois river. When the waters left the old channel at the point where the city of South Bend now stands they took an almost due northerly course, thus forming a great bend in the new river and giving to the future county seat of St. Joseph county its name. Since the formation of the St. Joseph from the changes thus made in the Kankakee and the Dowagiac, the new river has eroded its valleys from fifty to sixty feet into the old river deposits, but has not yet reached their base level. The Kankakee valley at South Bend, where it escapes from between the Maumee and Michigan moraines, is narrowed to three miles, with high, rugged banks and no flood plain. Five miles east and up the valley from South Bend, it reaches a width of six miles, which width it holds, with slight variation, until it arrives at the rim of the Saginaw basin. This end of the valley is thoroughly drained by the present St. Joseph river. There are a few peat bogs and marshes lying back from the river where the valley is broad and the modern channel well to one side. Otherwise the old valley above South Bend is one vast level sand-plain. Below South Bend, where the old valley remains silted up and there is no sufficient modern channel for complete drainage, the spring waters escaping from beneath the Michigan moraine, on the west, and from the foot of the Maumee, on the east, and also bubbling up from the bed of the old stream itself, as reported by Mr. William M. Whitten, when engineer in charge of the rock excavations at Momence, have caused a vast growth of peat or muck over the entire valley proper. Beneath this muck bed which extends from six to ten feet in depth, is found fine sand and river gravel, as shown by excavations made in the construction of large ditches, twenty to sixty feet in width, six to ten feet deep and now extending sixty to seventy miles below South Bend. Had the stream not changed its course at South Bend, but continued down the original valley, eroding a channel or partially clearing the old silted valley to a depth of from fifty to sixty feet, as the waters have done through their new course down the St. Joseph, there would have been no "Kankakee Marsh," and all that part of the valley from South Bend to Momence would have been a vast sandy plain, covered with timber and in general appearance similar to that part of the valley above South Bend.

Through the courtesy of Dr. Montgomery, we are enabled to illustrate the foregoing geological history with the annexed map prepared by him, which shows the moraines and ancient valleys and rivers, with the resulting configuration of St. Joseph county, Indiana, and vicinity.

Viii. Elevations, Strata And Soils

From the preceding history of the recent geological formations of the surface, the general character of the soils, clays, gravels and other minerals of the county, as well as that of its lakes and underground waters, is apparent. There is not an outcrop of primitive rock in the county, the entire surface, as we have seen, being covered with glacial drift which will probably average two himdred feet in depth. The only place in the county where this drift has been pierced to the underlying stratified rock is at South Bend, where in boring for gas and oil a few years ago, the drift was found to be one hundred and sixty feet thick. This, however, was in the valley of the St. Joseph river, seven hundred and twenty-five feet above tide, or fully one hundred and fifty feet lower than the uplands in the south- eastern part of the county, which are 875 to 900 feet above the sea. The levels of the more important railway stations in the county show the following altitudes in feet, above tide: Osceola, 736; Mishawaka, 700 to 743; South Bend, 708 to 726; Notre Dame, 710; Warren, 730; Lakeville, 837; Walkerton, 711. In seeking- for natural gas and oil at South Bend three wells were sunk into the rock. The following is the result of the borings of one of these wells, as given in the 18th report of the state geologist, showing the depth in feet of the drift and of the several layers of rock at this point, down to the Trenton rock: Drift, 160: Sub-carboniferous and Devonian, 220; Corniferous, 60; Lower Heiderberg, 40; Niagara, 640; Clinton, 60 ( ?) ; Hudson River, 200; Utica shales, 200; Trenton Limestone, 427. Total depth of well, 2,027. No gas or oil.

The drift over about one-half of the county is a gravel plain, formed, as we have seen, by the outwash from the ice-sheet. In the northwestern part of the county the outwash is from the Michigan moraine, and the plain descends from 800 feet at the border of the moraine to 725 at the Kankakee flats. In the southwestern part of the county the outwash is westward from the moraine of the Maumee lobe, and there is a similar descent from the moraine to the Kankakee valley. In the northeastern part of the county there is an extensive gravel plain along the St. Joseph river. The southeastern part of the county is occupied by a till, or clay, plain, which borders on the Maumee moraine on the east.

St. Joseph county contains an area of about four hundred and seventy-seven square miles, the surface of which is diversified by prairies, marshes, oak-openings and rolling timber lands. The oak-openings are covered with a light sandy soil, excellently suited to the raising of small fruits and vegetables. The timber lands possess a subsoil of clay, covered with a rich dark soil, which yields all the cereals in abundance. The prairies, both old and young, for the marshes and beds of former lakes are but incipient prairies, have the richest and most productive soils, and are unexcelled for the raising of all farm produce, except wheat, which winterkills on the lowest grounds. No prairies in the world are more beautiful or fertile than those of St. Joseph county. The finest and largest of these is Terre Coupee, in Olive township, over six miles in length, east and west, by four or five miles, north and south. Others are : Portage Prairie, in German township ; Palmer Prairie, in Center township ; Siunption Prairie, in Greene township ; ana Plarris Prairie, in Harris township. The flood valley of the Kankakee is itself a prairie of the richest and fairest promise, though as yet not fully reclaimed. No more varied, richer or more beautiful farm lands exist anywhere than in this good county of St. Joseph.

The lakes of St. Joseph county, as said by Prof. Blatchley, in his reporc as state geologist for the year 1900. are small in size, and most of them rapidly becoming extinct. Deposits of marl are found near and under many of them : not generally, however, of good workable area and thickness.

Among the most beautiful and noted of our lakes are Chain and Bass lakes, in Warren township, a few miles west of South Bend. The marl beds in and around these lakes cover nearly three hundred and fifty acres. Their sparkling waters have always been favorite resorts for boating and fishing. They were dear to the Indian long before the coming of the white man. Near by, to the east of these lakes, at Mount Pleasant, on Portage Prairie, stood the historic village of the Miamis, famous in story and song, where the treaty with LaSalle was made in 1681.

The Lakes of Notre Dame, already mentioned, lie northwest of and near to the University, and about two miles northeast of South Bend. St. Joseph's, the upper lake, has an area of about sixtv-five acres, and a niaximuni depth, on the west side, of twentyfive feet. The water area of St. Mary's, the lower lake, is a little more than thirty acres. The two lakes are separated by a stretch of low ground containing ten or more acres, in the midst of which is a small gravel island rising to a level with the uplands surrounding the lakes. In the past the lowland was covered with water, and there was but one lake, with the island in the middle. There is a marl deposit in and about these lakes which is of especial interest from the circumstance that it furnished the carbonate of lime material for the first, and for more than twenty years the only, Portland cement factory in Indiana. At St. Mary's lake the water deepens abruptly and close to the shore. The marl extends back several rods from shore. Under both lakes, it is claimed that the marl has an average thickness of more than thirty feet.

Clear lake and Mud lake lie on and just south of the Michigan-Indiana state line, about eight miles northw^est of South Bend, the northern two-thirds of Clear lake being in Michigan, and the remainder in Warren township, this county. . There is no workable marl deposit at these lakes. Clear lake furnishes a typical example of a lake whose water area has been encroached upon by decaying vegetation until the lake has become almost extinct. In 1880, according to the testimony of persons living in the vicinity, the entire basin of the lake, eighty acres or more, was covered with water to a depth of twenty to thirty feet. There was then no aquatic vegetation except along the south shore. Now the southern half is a vast morass of muck and spatterdock, with water nowhere more than six inches in depth. The western margin for one-third the distance across the lake is similarly filled. Many floating islands, or moving morasses of muck, rise nearly to the surface in other parts of the lake, so that its clear water area is but little over fifteen acres, and its deepest water only about twelve feet. A fine wooded ridge, with a gravely margin, rises twenty or more feet hiyh along the north half of the east side.

The banks on the northwest are lower, while the southern shores are marshy. Game fish is abundant. The high banks of Clear lake are the resort of numerous pleasure parties m the summer; one of the most enjoyable being the annual picnic of the old settlers of St. Joseph county, Indiana, and Berrien county, Michigan.

No one who has not visited a lake like this can realize how varied the kind and how abundant the individuals of plant life that can flourish in water. It is one of the best examples at present in Indiana of a dying lake, - an incipient marsh. Here one can see in actual progress many of those intermediate stages and processes which in time change a body of fresh water into a body of land.

The northern edge of the basin of former Mud lake lies south of the basin of Clear lake about one-third of a mile. Its former water area was over three hundred acres and its outline very irregular. It has now become a vast marsh, with not more than Ihirty acres of water, and that shallow and occupying two or three small isolated areas. The vegetation, however, is not nearly so dense or so varied as that at Clear lake.

Goose lake, called also Sousley's lake, lies a little over two miles north of the to\\-n of North Liberty. It is surrounded by low ground, and formerly included what is now called Little lake. The total area, including marsh and the surface of both lakes, is about four hundred acres. Goose lake now has an area of forty or fifty acres, and Little lake about thirty acres. Goose lake is very shallow. Little lake somewhat deeper. The surrounding bluffs are generally rather abrupt and fifteen to twenty feet high. There is an extensive deposit of marl in and about the lakes, but it is deeply covered over by muck.

Ivu{)ers lake is a small body of water, lying southeast of North Liberty. It is shallow and mostly surrounded by flat marshy land, with beds of marl beneath. Other small bodies of water are Pleasant lake and Riddle's lake, in Union township, south of Lakeville: Wharton lake and Duck lake, in Greene township; find Fish lake, in Warren township.