REPRODUCTION OF THE FIRST MAP OF CEDAR RAPIDS (Part 1) 316 REPRODUCTION OF THE FIRST MAP OF CEDAR RAPIDS (Part 2) 316 [Illustration: MAP OF LINN COUNTY] CHAPTER I _The Birth of Iowa_ Iowa is known as a prairie state. Prairie is a French word and signifies meadow. It was the name first applied to the great treeless plains of North America by the French missionaries who were the first white men to explore these regions. As yet scientists have not been able to explain the origin of the prairies. Different theories have been advanced, but the interesting problem is without satisfactory and conclusive solution. Agassiz, the scientist, maintained that America is not the "new world." "Hers was the first dry land lifted out of the waters," he wrote; "hers the first shores washed by the ocean that enveloped all the earth besides; and while Europe was represented only by islands rising here and there above the sea, America already stretched one unbroken line of land from Nova Scotia to the far West." Iowa, also, was born, had a beginning sometime. Just how many years ago this interesting event took place it is difficult to approximate. Prof. Samuel Calvin, state geologist, says that "geological records, untampered with, and unimpeachable, declare that for uncounted years Iowa, together with the great valley of the Mississippi, lay beneath the level of the sea. So far as it was inhabited at all, marine forms of animals and plants were its only occupants." The soils of the state were produced by the action of the ice in what is known as the glacial period. We are told how by Professor Calvin: "Glaciers and glacial action have contributed in a very large degree to the making of our magnificent State. What Iowa would have been had it never suffered from the effects of the ponderous ice sheets that successively overflowed its surface, is illustrated, but not perfectly, in the driftless area. Here we have an area that was not invaded by glaciers. Allamakee, parts of Jackson, Dubuque, Clayton, Fayette, and Winneshiek counties belong to the driftless area. During the last two decades deep wells have been bored through the loose surface deposit, and down into the underlying rocks. The record of these wells shows that the rock surface is very uneven. Before the glacial drift which now mantles nearly the whole of Iowa was deposited, the surface had been carved into an intricate system of hills and valleys. There were narrow gorges hundreds of feet in depth, and there were rugged, rocky cliffs, and isolated buttes corresponding in height with the depth of the valleys.