From Mr. Upham's conclusions it would seem that if ten thousand years be allowed for the post-glacial existence of Lake Michigan, one tenth of that period would be more than sufficient to account for the cliffs, deltas, beaches, and other analogous phenomena about Lake Agassiz. In other words, the duration of Lake Agassiz could not have been more than a thousand years, which gives us a measure of the rate at which the recession of the ice-front went on after it had withdrawn to the international boundary. The distance from there to the mouth of Nelson River is about 600 miles. The recession of the ice-front over that area proceeded, therefore, at the average rate of about half a mile per year. There are many evidences that the main period of glaciation west of the Rocky Mountains was considerably later than that in the eastern part of the continent. A portion of the facts pointing to this conclusion have been well stated by Mr. George F. Becker, of the United States Geological Survey. "No one," he says, "who has examined the glaciated regions of the Sierra can doubt that the great mass of the ice disappeared at a very recent period. The immense areas of polished surfaces fully exposed to the severe climate of say from 7,000 to 12,000 feet altitude, the insensible erosion of streams running over glaciated rocks, and the freshness of erratic boulders are sufficient evidence of this. There is also evidence that the glaciation began at no very distant geologic date. As Professor Whitney pointed out, glaciation is the last important geological phenomenon and succeeded the great lava flows. There is also much evidence that erosion has been trifling since the commencement of glaciation, excepting under peculiar circumstances. East of the range, for example, at Virginia City, andesites which there is every reason to suppose preglacial have scarcely suffered at all from erosion, so that depressions down which water runs at every shower are not yet marked with water-courses, while older rocks, even of Tertiary age and close by, are deeply carved. The rainfall at Virginia City is, to be sure, only about ten inches, so that rock would erode only say one third as fast as on the California coast; but even when full allowance is made for this difference, it is clear that these andesites must be much younger than the commencement of glaciation in the northeastern portion of the continent as usually estimated. So, too, the andesites near Clear Lake, in California, though beyond a doubt preglacial, have suffered little erosion, and one of the masses, Mount Konocti (or Uncle Sam), has nearly as characteristic a volcanic form as Mount Vesuvius."[EI] [Footnote EI: Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, vol. ii, pp. 196, 197.]