Man and the Glacial PeriodWright, G. Frederick (George Frederick)
History
Man and the Glacial Period
Wright, G. Frederick (George Frederick)
Glacial epoch; Prehistoric peoples
These broad, deep channels seem to have furnished the readiest outlet for
the surplus ice of the North, and so to have carried both currents of ice
beyond this driftless area before they became again confluent. The slight
elevation south of Lake Superior served to protect the area on account of
the feebleness of direct movement made possible by the strength of these
diverging lateral ice-currents. The phenomenon is almost exactly what
occurs where a slight obstruction in a river causes an eddy and preserves
a low portion of land below it from submergence. A glance at the map
will make it easily credible that an ice-movement south of Manitoba,
becoming confluent with one from Lake Superior, pushed far down into the
Missouri Valley and spread eastward to the Mississippi River, south of
the unglaciated driftless area, and there became confluent with a similar
movement which had been directed by the valleys of Lake Michigan and Lake
Erie. There can be little doubt that President Chamberlin's explanation
is in the main correct, and we have in this another illustration of the
analogy between the behaviour of moving ice and that of moving water.
[Illustration: Fig. 34.--Section of the east-and-west glacial furrows,
on Kelly's Island, preserved by Mr. Younglove. Fine sediment rests
immediately on the rock, with washed pebbles at the surface.]
The accompanying illustrations will give a better idea than words can
do of the celebrated glacial grooves on the hard limestone islands
near Sandusky, in the western part of Lake Erie. Through the interest
aroused in them by an excursion of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, while meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1888, the
Kelly Island Lime and Transport Company, of which Mr. M. C. Younglove is
the president, has been induced to deed to the Western Reserve Historical
Society for preservation a portion of one of the most remarkable of the
grooves still remaining.
The portion of the groove preserved is thirty-three feet across, and
the depth of the cut in the rock is seventeen feet below the line,
extending from rim to rim. Originally there was probably here a small
depression formed by preglacial water erosion, into which the ice crowded
the material, which became its graving-tool, and so the rasping and
polishing went on in increasing degree until this enormous furrow is
the result. The groove, however, is by no means simple, but presents a
series of corrugations merging into each other by beautiful curves. When
exposed for a considerable length it will resemble nothing else so much
as a collection of prostrate Corinthian columns lying side by side on a
concave surface.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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