328 RECENT CHANGES OF LEVEL 



East of Mount Desert the shore, as seen from the sea, presents essentially the same con- 

 ditions of erratic phenomena. The coating of drift is quite thin, and seeiiis to be alto- 

 gether of the secondary glacial time. At Milbridge the detrital sheet is again rather 

 thicker, but in character and origin does not differ particularly from that at Mt. Desert, 

 except that there are some signs of a table of detritus at the height of about one hundred 

 feet above the water. Most of the small rocky isles which make up the outer fringe of 

 the fiord zone, between Milbridge and Machiasport, are bare of drift, or nearly so, showing 

 the action of ocean waves for at least one hundred feet above the present level of the sea. 

 The character of the drift remains unchanged along this part of the coast. The remains of 

 the original glacial action, or that produced by the first stage of the glacial jjeriod, are rare, 

 if indeed they exist at all. Most of the drift material seems to have been reworked during 

 the second coming of the ice, when the glaciation, though insufficient to produce a great wear 

 ujjon the rocks, or to accumulate much detritus, yet served to efface or render illegible the 

 record made lay the far greater ice time which preceded it. Between Machiasport and East- 

 port the drift materials were narrowly examined ; they seem to Ijelong altogether to the 

 second stage of the ice action. The only peculiar features observable are connected with 

 some thin beds of brick clays, Avhich seem to mark the persistence of the subsidence after 

 the passage of the ice from the coast in its retreat. The country back of this section of 

 the coast has comparatively little height, so it is not improbable that the ice was less 

 strongly lu'ged to the seaward at this pomt than in the region to the westward. This may 

 have caused the ice to disappear here sometime before it did on the other parts of the 

 coast. 



The intensity of the ice action, which had evidently suffered some abatement in the 

 section between Machiasport and Eastport, as is shown by the disappearance of the fiord 

 character in this part of the shore, is again augmented in the immediate vicinity of the 

 latter point. The harbor of Eastport, though a typical specimen of fiord structure, is 

 almost destitute of glacial waste. Area for area it has not the tenth part of the detritus 

 we find in Boston Harljor, though the proportionate erosion has been more than as great. 

 The channels between the islands are far deeper than those found in Massachusetts Bay, 

 indicating a cutting agent much more active. Here, too, the ice, having kept its place 

 upon the rocks for some time after the re-elevation of the shore, there is little evidence of 

 recent elevation. Some few faintly indicated terraces lying at a height of ten or fifteen feet 

 above the sea, seem to sho^v that the last ten feet of the lift ma}' have been effected after 

 the re-elevation of the shore. All the drift material appears to have been derived from the 

 immediate neighborhood of the shore line ; there is none which we are required to refer to 

 points far in the interior. Here, as elsewhere, it must not be hastily inferred that the glacial 

 period did not effect the transportation of materials from great distances. We must recon- 

 cile the facts as we find them, with what we may observe at other points where distant 

 transportation is most unequivocally proven.^ This can best be done by supposing that the 

 secondary glaciation swept away the del^ris left by the first, and allowed only the product 

 of its relatively feeble erosion to attest the presence of glacial conditions. 



From Eastport northward, there is a gradual change in the character of the drift material 

 which is hard to explain. The beds of gravel nearly disap^Dcar, and in their place come 



1 In the Ohio Valley, as far south as 38° N. L., we have tired miles north of that point by the agency of ice. 

 materials which have come from a rejrion at least six Lun- 



