[&anonc] DOCHET (ST. CROIX) ISLAND 138 
of the island. Those below high tide were, no doubt, brought for 
the most part at the same time, though some of them may have been 
drifted by floating ice in recent times from the mainland up the river. 
Following the glacial period this region was submerged beneath the 
sea, during which time this glacial soil was, no doubt, more or less 
worked over and given the final details of its levels and character. 
The soil of the island consists of sand and clay much intermingled, 
and forming a fine agricultural soil of fair quality on which garden 
crops thrive well, a fact of some importance in its history. The inter- 
mingling of the clay and sand, instead of its separation into beds, 
makes the soil very pervious to water; and this, together with its 
shallowness, does not allow the presence of springs, nor the possibility 
of good wells, a fact which had, as we shall see, a great influence upon 
the early history of the island.! 
The surface of the island, as already mentioned, slopes to near 
the water’s edge on the western side of the island, but elsewhere ends 
in bluffs of soil descending steeply to the rocks beneath, or to the 
sandy beach. The bluffs on the north and east sides are covered with 
small trees, but on the south the vegetation is wanting, and the bluff 
of sand and clay is so abrupt (Fig. 20, 24) that the least disturbance 
is enough to bring it down in an avalanche. Now, the foot of this 
bluff which rests on the sand beach, and the feet of others on the rocks 
as well, are washed by the waves at the highest tides, and they are 
obviously being eaten away by the waves and tide. That a washing 
away of the island is steadily going on is attested not only by the 
universal testimony of residents in the vicinity, but also by a compari- 
son of the several existent maps of the island, which also afford a 
fair measure of its amount. If we compare the ancient map of 1604 
made by Champlain (Fig. 8), with the much later map by Wright (Fig. 
12), and with the two modern maps of 1885 and 1902 (Figs. 13, 3), 
a subject made the plainer if they are reduced to the same scale and 
superposed as in the accompanying figures (Figs. 6 and 14), it will 
be seen that in three hundred years the island has lost little on its 
northern and western sides, but has lost greatly at its southern end 
and on the southwest, where large sections of the island, including 
the site of the cemetery of 1604 and the knoll on which de Monts 
mounted his cannon, together with much of the island north of 


1 The light-keeper has to rely for his water supply upon reservoirs filled 
by the rain collected from the roof of his house. 
? Champlain’s map, being sketchy and in some ways inaccurate, must be 
altered somewhat to fit the actual form of the island. It is, however, given 
exactly in Fig. 6, but in Fig. 14 it is altered to accord as nearly as possible 
with what must have been the real form of the island. 
