"Ere long some westland genius, moved by the mystic inspiration of the rich and wondrous heritage of Iowa nativity, may sing the song of our legends and traditions, may voice in verse the wondrous story of his illustrious state. Maybe somewhere among the humble homes where blood and bone and brain grow pure and strong, where simple food with frugal ways feeds wondering minds and drives them craving into nature's secrets and her songs--somewhere along the settler's pathway or by the Indian trail where now the country churchyards grown with uncut grasses hide the forms of sturdy ancestors sleeping all in peaceful ignorance of wayward sons or wondrous progeny--somewhere where rising sun beholds the peasantry at early toil and leaves them in the mystic twilight ere their tasks are done, where odors of the corn and new-mown hay and vine-clad hedges by the shadowy roadside linger long into the night-time, as a sweet and sacred balm for tired hearts--somewhere, sometime the song of Iowa shall rise and live, and it will not omit the thought of that gifted son who said: 'Iowa, the affections of her people, like the rivers of her borders, flow to an inseparable union.'" CHAPTER V _The Geology of Linn County_ BY WILLIAM HARMON NORTON, PROFESSOR OF GEOLOGY IN CORNELL COLLEGE It is said that a certain county in Kentucky, underlain by limestone, always goes democratic; while a county adjacent, underlain by sandstone, is as invariably republican. Certain it is that a deal of politics, economics, and history depends at last analysis more or less upon the processes past and present which belong to geology and physiography. The rocks, the minerals they contain, and the water they store, the hills and valleys into which they have been carved, and the soils to which they weather, largely control the industries, locate the cities, and outcrop even in the social, intellectual, and moral life of the people. The metropolis of Linn county, for example, owes its name and place to the rapids of the Cedar, and the rapids find ultimate cause in the fact that some millions of years ago nature stopped laying a softer rock upon the ocean bed and deposited upon it one of more resistant texture. In the eastern part of the county the Chicago & Northwestern Railway runs for very good and sufficient reasons where once rested the edge of a long tongue of glacial ice, and west of Cedar Rapids its route is determined by the course taken by the turbid floods issuing from the melting glaciers. The streets of Mount Vernon and several of the main highways of the county do not lie with the points of the compass but follow the direction of flow of ancient ice-streams. The distribution of forest and prairie is due to geologic causes. The values of farm lands are markedly affected by the same influences, and we can even point out a little area which differs from its surroundings