Certain extraordinary features were produced when the retreat
of the ice sheet had progressed so far as to open an eastward outlet
for the marginal lakes along the depression between the northward
slope of the Appalachian plateau in west-central New York and the
southward slope of the melting ice sheet; for when this eastward
outlet came to be lower than the south-westward outlet across the
height of land to the Ohio or Mississippi river, the discharge of the
marginal lakes was changed from the Mississippi system to the
Hudson system. Many well-defined channels, cutting across the
north-sloping spurs of the plateau in the neighbourhood of Syracuse,
N.Y., mark the temporary paths of the ice-bordered outlet river.
Successive channels are found at lower and lower levels on the
plateau slope, thus indicating the successive courses taken by the
lake outlet as the ice melted farther and farther back. On some of
these channels deep gorges were eroded heading in temporary cataracts
which exceeded Niagara in height but not in breadth; the pools
excavated by the plunging waters at the head of the gorges are now
occupied by little lakes. The most significant stage in this series
of changes occurred when the glacio-marginal lake waters were
lowered so that the long cuesta of Niagara limestone was laid bare
in western New York; the previously confluent waters were then
divided into two lakes; the higher one, Erie, supplying the outflowing
Niagara river, which poured its waters down the escarpment of the
cuesta to the lower lake, Ontario, whose outlet for a time ran down
the Mohawk Valley to the Hudson: thus Niagara falls began. (See
Niagara.)
Many additional features associated with the glacial period might be described, but space can be given to four only. In certain districts the subglacial till was not spread out in a smooth plain, but accumulated in elliptical mounds, 100 or 200 ft. high, half a mile or a mile long, with axes parallel to the direction of the ice motion as indicated by striae on the underlying rock floor; these hills are known by the Irish name, drumlins, used for similar hills in north-western Ireland. The most remarkable groups of drumlins occur in western New York, where their number is estimated at over 6000, and in southern Wisconsin, where it is placed at 5000. They completely dominate the topography of their districts.
A curious deposit of an impalpably fine and unstratified silt, known by the German name loess, lies on the older drift sheets near the larger river courses of the upper Mississippi basin. It attains a thickness of 20 ft. or more near the rivers and gradually fades away at a distance of ten or more miles on either side. It is of inexhaustible fertility, being in this as well as in other respects closely like the loess in China and other parts of Asia, as well as in Germany. It contains land shells, and hence cannot be attributed to marine or lacustrine submergence. The best explanation suggested for loess is that, during certain phases of the glacial period, it was carried as dust by the winds from the flood plains of aggrading rivers, and slowly deposited on the neighbouring grass-covered plains.
South-western Wisconsin and parts of the adjacent states of Illinois. Iowa and Minnesota are known as the “driftless area,” because, although bordered by drift sheets and moraines, it is free from glacial deposits. It must therefore have been a sort of oasis, when the ice sheets from the north advanced past it on the east and west and joined around its southern border. The reason for this exemption from glaciation is the converse of that for the southward convexity of the morainic loops; for while they mark the paths of greatest glacial advance along lowland troughs (lake basins), the driftless area is a district protected from ice invasion by reason of the obstruction which the highlands of northern Wisconsin and Michigan (part of the Superior oldland) offered to glacial advance.
The course of the upper Mississippi river is largely consequent upon glacial deposits. Its sources are in the morainic lakes in northern Minnesota; Lake Itasca being only one of many glacial lakes which supply the headwater branches of the great river. The drift deposits thereabouts are so heavy that the present divides between the drainage basins of Hudson Bay, Lake Superior and the Gulf of Mexico evidently stand in no very definite relation to the preglacial divides. The course of the Mississippi through Minnesota is largely guided by the form of the drift cover. Several rapids and the Falls of St Anthony (determining the site of Minneapolis) are signs of immaturity, resulting from superposition through the drift on the under rock. Farther south, as far as the entrance of the Ohio, the Mississippi follows a rock-walled valley 300 to 400 ft. deep, with a flood-plain 2 to 4 m. wide; this valley seems to represent the path of an enlarged early-glacial Mississippi, when much precipitation that is to-day discharged to Hudson Bay and the Gulf of St Lawrence was delivered to the Gulf of Mexico, for the curves of the present river are of distinctly smaller radius than the curves of the valley. Lake Pepin (30 m. below St Paul), a picturesque expansion of the river across its flood-plain, is due to the aggravation of the valley floor where the Chippewa river, coming from the north-east, brought an overload of fluvio-glacial drift. Hence even the “father of waters,” like so many other rivers in the Northern states, owes many of its features more or less directly to glacial action.
The fertility of the prairies is a natural consequence of their origin. During the mechanical comminution of the till no vegetation was present to remove the minerals essential to plant growth, as is the case in the soils of normally weathered and dissected peneplains, such as the Appalachian piedmont, where the soils, though not exhausted by the primeval forest cover, are by no means so rich as the till sheets of the prairies. Moreover, whatever the rocky under structure, the till soil has been averaged by a thorough mechanical mixture of rock grindings; hence the prairies are continuously fertile for scores of miles together.
The true prairies, when first explored, were covered with a rich growth of natural grass and annual flowering plants. To-day they are covered with farms. The cause of the treelessness has been much discussed. It does not seem to lie in peculiarities of temperature or of precipitation; for trees thrive where they are properly planted on the prairies; every town and farm to-day has its avenues and groves of trees; but it should be noted that west of the Mississippi river increasing aridity becomes an important factor, and is the chief cause of the treelessness of the Great Plains (see below). The treelessness of the prairies cannot be due to insufficient time for tree invasion since glacial evacuation; for forests cover the rocky uplands of Canada, which were occupied by ice for ages after the prairies were laid bare. A more probable cause is found in the fineness of the prairie soil, which is inimical to the growth of young trees in competition with the grasses and annual plants. Prairie fires, both of natural and artificial origin, are also a contributive cause; for young trees are exterminated by fires, but annual plants soon reappear.
The Gulf Coastal Plain.—The westward extension of the Atlantic coastal plain around the Gulf of Mexico carries with it a repetition of certain features already described, and the addition of several new ones. As in the Atlantic coastal plain, it is only the lower, seaward part of this region that deserves the name of plain, for there alone is the surface unbroken by hills or valleys; the inner part, initially a plain by reason of its essentially horizontal (gently seaward-sloping) structure, has been converted by mature dissection into an elaborate complex of hills and valleys, usually of increasing altitude and relief as one passes inland.
The special features of the Gulf Plain are the peninsular extension of the plain in Florida, the belted arrangement of relief and soils in Alabama and in Texas, and the Mississippi embayment or inland extension of the plain half-way up the course of the Mississippi river, with the Mississippi flood plain there included.
A broad, low crustal arch extends southward at the junction of the Atlantic and Gulf coastal plains; the emerged half of the arch Florida. constitutes the visible lowland peninsula of Florida; the submerged half extends westward under the shallow overlapping waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The northern part of the peninsula is composed largely of a weak limestone; here much of the lowland drainage is underground, forming many sink-holes (swallow-holes). Many small lakes in the lowland appear to owe their basins to the solution of the limestones. Valuable phosphate deposits occur in certain districts. The southern part of the state includes the “Everglades” (q.v.), a large area of low, flat, marshy land, overgrown with tall reedy grass, a veritable wilderness; thus giving Florida an unenvied first rank among the states in marsh area. The eastern coast is fringed by long-stretching sand reefs, enclosing lagoons so narrow and continuous that they are popularly called “rivers.” At the southern end of the peninsula is a series of coral islands, known as “keys”; they appear to be due to the forward growth of corals and other lime-secreting organisms towards the strong current of the Gulf Stream, by which their food is supplied: the part of the peninsula composed of coral reefs is less than has been formerly supposed. The western coast has fewer and shorter off-shore reefs; much of it is of minutely irregular outline, which seems to be determined less by the work of the sea than by the forward growth of mangrove swamps in the shallow salt water.
A typical example of a belted coastal plain is found in Alabama and the adjacent part of Mississippi. The plain is here about Alabama. 150 m. wide. The basal formation is chiefly a weak limestone, which has been stripped from its original innermost extension and worn down to a flat inner lowland of rich black soil, thus gaining the name of the “black belt.” The lowland is enclosed by an upland or cuesta, known as Chunnenugga Ridge, sustained by partly consolidated sandy strata; the upland, however, is not continuous, and hence should be described as a “maturely dissected cuesta,” It has a relatively rapid descent toward the inner lowland, and a very gradual descent to the coast prairies, which become very low, flat and marshy before dipping under the Gulf waters, where they are generally fringed by off-shore reefs.
The coastal plain extends 500 m. inland on the axis of the Mississippi embayment. Its inner border affords admirable examples of topographical discordance where it sweeps north-westward square
