The Mankato free press., 1923-07-06
GREAT TREES HAD cRAsHE . BEFORE MOVING ICE AND
NOW LIE BURIED IN sU5-AFToNAN cLAYS.

~SNIS
floating. In this fresh water sea they
would drop boulders in the gather
ing sands. They present strange |
contrasts now, to the fine material
amongst which they fell. The gath |
er1ng sand that was drifting at the
bottom was sharp and angular
minute fragments Of quartz ana
feldspar. II is from the glaciaI |
-four" It came from rocks rubbed !
resistlessly together making a pro-
duct far different from the rounded |
grains that had been rolled on ocean |
beaches or along beds Of slow now-
ing rivers.
Close together these two kinds OF
sands are lying sometimes. Go to
the left bank Of the lie Sueur river
where the second bridge crosses.
There the Sub Aftonian Is missing
and the Kansan. in a red glory or
iron rests on a long white strand Of
that Cretaceous sea.
Feel its rounded crystals that
once were tumbled in its breakers.
Scatter among them some Of the
harsh fragments that drop from the
Is the difference between, when a
great force is working slowly, gently
and the same when crushing, grind
ing.
There are no records there u
mark the long Tertiary which should
lie in between those sands; of the
Eocene and the other periods when
MAMMALIAN life was evolving-the
Kansan planed them all away. There
at the Cretaceous abruptly, we hear
the songs Of the sea. The teeth OF
sharks and vertebrae Of monosaurs
emerge to view. Dainty shells tell of
genial climes. Lush tropical odors
seem to float by, and then comes
avoid q space-roofed over by the
trappings Of new worid--a world
of ice and desolation--the Kansan
Drift.
But there are records of that lost
interval. Down in the dense clay
river; down deep below the bottom
Of the stream where glacial foods
did not penetrate, In a basin formed
by local land elevation in early Ter
tiary, there lie the treasures that
are missing-there drifted the bones
Of animals who had lived during
that period
In protecting caskets of clay they
are resting. One was the. venerable
bone Of a camel, an early camel. an
Eocene camel for the bone shows
the differentiation taking place La.
the changing form from five toes to
two. It is a metatarsal bone and in
dicates an animal the size of wolf.
Some of these bones and teeth
found there are respondent with
opal, tinted from long submergence
in silecious waters-these in part,
account for some of the life that
had once filled that void. s |
also, a few rods further up the
stream, yeilowish, clay rising gradu-
ally above the Kansan and in 1t a
line of gravel and boulders along
the center. The clay is the ground
moraines of the Earlier and Later
Wisconsin and together they cap all
other formations, excepting the dust
in which we are living. The boul-
ders are the dividing line between
the two moraines. That line of
gathered rocks tells of long period
| Of denudation; an Interglacial, when
many feet of soil was there washed
away. The rocks as they settled
were ever on the surface-accumu-
lating as the centuries passed by.
In among these rocks are the
DOn0S Ol DlSOu. uCy AlC W 1CCL UCf
low the present surface; so feet be-
low where their short horned des-
cendants were so recently passing
Then follow down the river:
Great trees had crashed before NOV
ing ice and now lie buried in Sub
Aftonian clays. They lie prone and
parallel, mutely pointing to the set.
ting sun, as the direction their des-
troyer travelled.
/ A land slide at times covers them
over, but the river east ever onward
and through 1t, in its war on the
Interglacial flowers were blooming
at South Bend between the Kansan
and Earlier Wisconsin and black
of the asters and goldenrods and
the Ostrich Plume fern. They once
nodded and bowed to autumn winds
as their descendants are doing to-
ay-traveled Observation-Disclosures
from a long southern journey! But
again to our Moulin. It's drama de-.
coys us. We wander too far.
intense Cold
Not the least interesting feature
connected with this moulin is tha
it was made in rs feet of frozen gra
vel. Frozen it surely must have beer
or the walls of sand would not have
stood. This condition Of porous sol
postulates a climate of great severi
ty which is contrary to some theor
les as to the cause of the Ice Ages
. attributing them all solely to periods
of excessive moisture in winte
when the SHOWS would accumulate
faster than the summers could mel
, them.
Our Moulin says "No"-but all o
its legends can not now be FOLLOWED
nor all of the threads that lead from
, them be traced They reach far ali,
wide: from Hudson Bay: from La
brador on the East to the grea
Keewacn plain on the West and tt
the hills and dales around US, the!
weave and wind