Virtually, the whole of this immense
region is a plain. For a distance extending nearly 1500 miles east and
west, and 600 north and south, there is scarcely an elevation worthy
to be called a mountain. Even hills are not common; though a good deal
of the face of the country has more or less of that "rolling"
character, which is described in the opening pages of this work.
There is much reason to believe, that the territory which now composes
Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and a large portion of the country
west of the Mississippi, lay formerly under water. The soil of all the
former states has the appearance of an alluvial deposit; and isolated
rocks have been found, of a nature and in situations which render it
difficult to refute the opinion that they have been transferred to
their present beds by floating ice. This theory assumes that the Great
Lakes were the deep pools of one immense body of fresh water, which
lay too low to be drained by the irruption that laid bare the land.
It will be remembered that the French, when masters of the Canadas and
Louisiana, claimed the whole of the territory in question.
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