SALT MARSHES -PAST AND FUTURE 



or above. Hence the land could not have been 

 stationary or rising. One alternative alone 

 remains, namely that the land has been slowly 

 sinking, a process in which all landmarks are 

 covered up or " drowned." Of course the 

 same results would obtain if, instead of the 

 sinking of the land, there had been a rising 

 of the water, and the theory is held by some 

 that the amount of water in the ocean was 

 tremendously increased by the melting of the 

 glaciers during their recession. It hardly 

 seems possible that this would account for the 

 difference in level which seems to have taken 

 place during the last thousand years or so, 

 at the same time that an opposite change has 

 been taking place in Labrador. Be that as 

 it may, if one stands at the top of Hog Island 

 at high tide at the full of the moon, and looks 

 out over the waste of waters extending sev- 

 eral miles inland, flooding all the marshy val- 

 leys and making veritable islands of the drum- 

 lins, one is impressed with the force and ac- 

 curacy of this term drowned. 



At a number of places along the coast of 

 Essex County the evidence of the changing 

 level of the land is shown so plainly that he 

 who runs or even swims may read, for there 



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