The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1908-07-03

to line running through Long Island,
across New Jersey and Pennsylvania,
to Salamanca, N. Y, where it turned
southwestward and, with many minor
variations, reached the Ohio river so
or 60 miles above Cincinnati, crossed
Kentucky and southern Indiana, reach
ing it's farthest extent at Carbonate,
ILL.,; thence northwest, it crossed the
Mississippi river at ST. Louis, and fol-
lowed the Missouri and Kansas rivers
to Topeka, where it swung northward
across the eastern parts of Kansas
and Nebraska, and through central
Dakota to near the Canada line;
thence proceeding with a long loop
where it crossed the Rocky mountains
and the Sierras) to Puget sound and
the Pacific ocean. If one had ap-
preached this line during the glacial
period anywhere from the south, he
would have Immediately struck the
conditions of Greenland, and found
them continuous for thousands of
miles Alaska still retains the stumps
of this great glacier, several hundred
square miles being covered by the
Muir glacier alone, and still larger
area by the Malaspina glacier, which
comes down from Mount st. Elias.
In Europe the ice fields radiated from
the Scandinavian peninsula, extending
across the North sea to southern Eng
land, and across the Baltic to central
Germany and southeastern Russia.
In thinking of the glacial period it
should be kept clearly in mind that
glacial ice is simply compressed snow
Glaciers are formed wherever there is
a snowfall which exceeds the melting
power of the warm season. Everyone
is familiar with the fact that a snow
ball may be made as hard as ice by
sufficient pressure in the hands.
That ice in great masses could flow
like cold tar or molasses or any other
semi-fuid seemed, until short time
ago, impossible, and did not enter into
the thought of mankind. But about
70 years ago it was demonstrated in
Switzerland that the ice was actually
moving down the valleys, proceeding,
not like an avalanche, but creeping
with a true flow, and carrying on its
back and frozen into it's mass frag-
ments of rock of varying sizes, some
of them being as large as a small
house. Under the lee of one of these
rock masses on top of the Aar glacier
Agassiz built him a hut, and conducted
many of his important observations.
The great extent of this glacial
movement in former times was shown
by the distance which some of these
powders had been carried.
In North America the transportation
of powders by glacial ice has been
even more remarkable. The back
bone of Cape Cod and Long Island, a
line of hills from one hundred to two
hundred feet high, and two or three
miles broad, is simply a pile of bowl
ders and small fragments transported
from New England to Canada. Ply
mouth Rock is a glacial bowlder
which journeyed from it's northern
home thousands of years before the
Pilgrims set out from Holland. Bowl
ders from the Adirondack mountains
are found upon the SUBMITS of the
Alleghenies in northeastern Pennsyl-
vania In southern Ohio there are
long belts of Canadian powders
which can be traced to lodges of rock
north of Lake Huron. Even in Boone
county, Kentucky, few miles south
of Cincinnati, number Of red jasper
conglomerate powders, some of them
two or three feet in diameter, have
been found, which came from we'll
known lodges in Canada north of Lake
Huron. Bowlders of large size from
these same lodges have also been
found as far southwest as Keokuk, la.
Bowlders from Wisconsin and Mime
sofa and Dakota abound in northern
Missouri down to the Missouri river,
some having recently been uncovered.
Armed with these facts concerning