188 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF [1883. 



it appeared the same up and down the peninsula for miles. Along 

 the shore he found numerous prostrate trees, and upright stumps 

 which had been ground off a few feet above the surfiice. The 

 stumps could be seen extending down below low-water mark, and 

 the}' extended up to the bottom of the highland at high-water 

 mark, where the mud in which they had grown was covered hy the 

 glacial deposit already referred to. The wood exhibited was part 

 of one of these prostrate trunks, and is evidently the same species 

 as that now existing on the land, Abies Sitkensis. It is quite 

 sound, and exhibits no evidence of great age since it became 

 covered with tJie drift. The shores are strewn with rocks and 

 stones of various classes, as usual in eases of glacial deposits. 

 On one of the prostrate trunks — the one from which the piece of 

 wood exhibited was taken — there lies a block of granite which, 

 by measurement, was found to contain 2214 cubic feet. This 

 trunk was partiallj^ bent in the middle by the weight of the huge 

 block of stone, showing that the block had fallen on it, while the 

 ground beneath the trunk was comparatively soft. Near this, but 

 so far as could be seen not on any trunk, was a much larger mass 

 of granite, comprising 3888 cubic feet. The whole of the circum- 

 stances pointed to the almost certainty that there had been a 

 sudden subsidence of the land, and that with the subsidence there 

 was a flow of w-ater with icebergs on which were these huge rocks, 

 and which crushed the trees and tore off those which were strong 

 enough to resist ; and that subsequentl}^ to the destruction of the 

 forest, the whole surface became covered to a great depth with 

 drift. Since that time there must have been an elevation of the 

 land, and the remains of the trees are again brought to their 

 original surface, but with a deep bed of earth above them. Mr. 

 Meehan believed that the botanical facts might aftbrd a clue to 

 an approximation to the time when these events occurred. The 

 youth of the living forest indicated that, at the farthest, it could 

 not have been more than a few hundred years since the elevation 

 occurred. As already noted, the trees in the immediate vicinity 

 appeared to be but about fifty years since germination ; but 

 Tmless the original parent trees which furnished the seed for the 

 uplifted land w-ere near by, it might take some years for the seed 

 to scatter from bearing trees, grow to maturit}', again seed, and 

 in this way travel to where we now find them. But as original 

 forests were evidently not so very far distant, two or three hundred 

 years ought to cover all the time required. The Rev. Mr. Corlies, 

 a missionary at Juneau, or Harrisb,urg as it is marked on some 

 charts, informed the speaker that an Indian chief had told him 

 that about seven or eight generations ago, as tradition told them, 

 there had been a sudden and terrible flood in that land, and only 

 a few Indians had escaped in a large canoe. The probable iden- 

 tity of the sunken trees with the present species, and the freshness 

 of the wood, would indicate no ver}- great date backwards at 

 which the original subsidence occurred. 



