Page:The Government of Iowa 1911.djvu/20

2 State Geologists, the late Professor Samuel Calvin, says: "It would seem that a very short chapter ought to be sufficient to include all that can be said concerning the physical features of Iowa; for the state is simply an extensive plain — over large areas a very monotonous plain — lying between the great rivers and rising but little above them at any point." Yet here and there, especially along the watercourses, rugged hills and picturesque bluffs often rise to the height of three or four hundred feet. A part of this hilly region in the northeastern part of the State has aptly been called "the Switzerland of Iowa."

The Prairies. — "It is estimated," says Dr. White, an earlier State Geologist, "that seven-eighths of the surface of Iowa was prairie when the State was first settled." To the early explorer and pioneer, who had fought his way through the stubborn forests and underbrush of the eastern part of the continent, these treeless prairies were an object of great wonder and interest. To stand upon them was like being out in midocean. The horizon seemed like a perfect circle; and the heavens rose like an inverted bowl above the explorer's head. Is it any wonder that on some of the early maps the Iowa country is designated as a "Great Desert"? The early pioneers clung to watercourses, where timber, so necessary for building and fuel most abounded. They seemed to be afraid to settle in the open country, being ignorant of the richness of the prairie soil.

The Work of the Glaciers. — How came Iowa to be a country in which the plough found itself almost independent of the axe and the grub hook? Geology, whose records