The arrangement of the Great Lakes is thus seen to he closely synipathetic with the course of the lowlands worn on the two belts of weaker strata on either side of the Niagara cuesta; Ontario, Georgian Bay and Green Bay occupy depressions in the lowland on the inner side of the cuesta; Erie, Huron and Michigan lie in depressions in the lowland on the outer side.
The occurrence of the lake basins in the lowland belts on either side of the Niagara cuesta is an abnormal feature, not to be explained by ordinary erosion, which can produce only valleys.
The till plains, although sweeping in broad swells of slowly changing altitude, are often level to the eye, and the view across them stretches to the horizon, unless interrupted by groves of trees along the watercourses, or by belts of low morainic hills.
The great ice sheets formed terminal moraines around their border at various halting stages; but the morainic belts are of small relief in comparison to the great area of the ice; they rise gently from the till plains to a height of 50, 100 or more feet; they may be one, two or three miles wide; and their hilly surface, dotted over with boulders, contains many small lakes in basins or hollows, instead of streams in valleys.
The morainic belts are arranged in groups of concentric loops, convex southward, because the ice sheets advanced in lobes along the lowlands of the Great Lakes; neighboring morainic loops join each other in re-entrants (north-pointing cusps), where two adjacent glacial lobes came together and formed their moraines in largest volume.
