﻿NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK 1 37 



known as Sakonnet River ; the other as the eastern channel of 

 Narragansett Bay. Aquidneck or Rhode Island lies between them. 

 Bristol Narrows connects the above channel with Mount Hope Bay. 

 Mount Hope is a little above the narrows near the bay side and affords 

 a fine view over nearly the whole Narragansett region. 



It has been objected that there are no bars, that a fleet may pass 

 in without any difficulty. But the objectors lose sight of the different 

 conditions probably obtaining then. No one can say just what the 

 change in elevation has been during nine hundred years ; yet there are 

 some measures which have been taken recently, and there are earlier 

 indications. The Dighton Rock inscription in Taunton River is wholly 

 overflowed in ordinary tides ; it was partly overflowed in high tides 

 about 1700 when Cotton Mather wrote. We must suppose that it was 

 entirely free of the tide and in no apparent danger when the figures 

 were carven. Other inscribed rocks give like testimony. Mr. Davis's 

 marsh experiments elsewhere cited are quite conclusive. Dr. McGee 

 tells me that the depression at Atlantic City is found to be probably 

 from two to four feet per century. It seems to be about that for Ocean 

 City, Maryland, a point which I have watched for more than twenty- 

 five years. A proven descent has occurred at New York and in 

 Boston Harbor during the past seventy years. Of course we cannot 

 be quite sure that this existed in older times, for reasons already given, 

 but continuity of movement seems more probable than cessation, when 

 there is no apparent reason for the latter. As we know of a sufficient 

 cause for the continuous lowering of the southern New England 

 coast, and that it has really descended during several centuries, we 

 may at least be pretty sure that it was higher in the year 1004 than it 

 is now 7 ; but by how many feet who can say ? 



Of course the action of tides and river-currents, in scouring out 

 and in depositing, must also be kept in mind. For example, though 

 parts of Mount Hope Bay near that hill are deep, the remainder of it 

 seems to have been silted up by Taunton River and other tributaries, 

 the soundings running below twenty feet. The shallows have been 

 dredged through to make a clear channel. To get the soundings of 

 the year 1004, we must suppose all this accumulation removed and 

 the old elevation restored. Whether the net results would leave a 

 Mount Hope Bay approaching its present size may be questioned ; but 

 there would be at least a small bay, unless the depression has amounted 

 to seventy feet, which seems unlikely. A very much less descent 

 would, however, make a bar in a curved line across the main channel 

 where a vessel struck in 1912 ; would close the strait now called 



