Harper's New Monthly Magazine Volume 21 June to November 1860 . cutors of Galileo. The water woulddrop out of the rivers and lakes and sea if theywere turned the upside down, and as for the im-mense plain on which we live, why, it rests onan elephant, and the elephant stands on the backof a tortoise, and the tortoise on a snake, andthe snake has a kink in his convolutions wliichgives him a purchase whereby he holds up all. Erom St. Jo our course was northwest, a di-rection which led us along over the prairie at thefoot of Pembina Mountain for two days and then TO EED EIVER AND BEYOND. 591 acro
Harper's New Monthly Magazine Volume 21 June to November 1860 . cutors of Galileo. The water woulddrop out of the rivers and lakes and sea if theywere turned the upside down, and as for the im-mense plain on which we live, why, it rests onan elephant, and the elephant stands on the backof a tortoise, and the tortoise on a snake, andthe snake has a kink in his convolutions wliichgives him a purchase whereby he holds up all. Erom St. Jo our course was northwest, a di-rection which led us along over the prairie at thefoot of Pembina Mountain for two days and then TO EED EIVER AND BEYOND. 591 across it. Pembina Mountain is 210 feet fact it is no mountain at all, nor yet a hill,but only a terrace of table-land, the ancientshore of a great body of water which once filledthe whole of the Red River Valley. The sum-mit is quite level, and extends so for five mileswestward, to another terrace level with the buffaloplains which stretch on to the Missouri. Thesame terrace may be traced northward, and southto the high land near the head of the Sheyenne. River and Devils Lake. Of the prairie countrybeyond, and of the Red River generally, our ob-servations confirmed the truth of Owens state-ment, that the limestones of the Red River formthe basis of a large portion of it. They archighly magnesian, having 17 to 40 per cent, ofalkaline earth. Another of these Natures steps from a lowerto a higher level may be traced from TurtleMount on the 49th parallel to the banks ofSwan River, in 52° 30, and even around toBasqua Hill, says Sir George Simpson, on thewaters of the lower Saskatchewan. Like Pem-bina Mountain, this ridge, whose sand-hills weafteiward crossed, was once the shore of a vastinland sea. When its height determined theboundary of the great body of waters, not onlythe Red River Valley, but also Lakes Winnipeg,Manitoba, and Winnipegoos, with many of theirfeeders, were themselves ingulfed. The largestof the three great fragments of the primeval sheetof waters, La
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