138 



stating that any indications of oakum were perceptible. The fact is, 

 that nothing of the kind was necessary. Both canoes were hollowed 

 out of single trees. Of what use, therefore, could oakum have been ? 

 Caulking was unnecessary. The stern of the largest is precisely the 

 same as others I have seen, a moveable board ; but clay, not oakum, 

 has been applied at the only points through which water was at all 

 likely to ooze. The other canoe has a closed stem. 



" A more curious feature presented itself in regard to a third canoe 

 of small dimensions, found within a few yards of the other two. 

 Underneath this tliu'd boat was a small piece of lead, bearing the 

 evident marks of iron nail heads, which had perforated it. The lead 

 seems quite extraneous to the boat ; but how it came there, or what 

 purpose it served, is puzzling. There can be no doubt of the fact ; for 

 the person who found the lead gave it to me within a few hours after he 

 got it, and had no earthly motive to misrepresent the matter. My 

 opinion is, that the lead was plunder from some civilized peojile who 

 may have visited even the remote shores of the estuaiy of the Clyde. 

 We know the people of Tyre did visit Cornwall in search of thi and 

 lead, thousands of years ago, and what is more likely than that they 

 should follow up their exploration of the western side of the island, 

 through the Irish sea? This, of course, is mere conjecture; and I 

 throw out the idea as the best that at present occurs to me in the way 

 of explanation, though I am not satisfied with it in my own mind." 



The evidence afforded us by the embedding of these canoes, carries 

 us back into a very remote antiquity. We must nevertheless clearly 

 distinguish between this period and that during which the formation 

 of the raised beaches was being accomplished. It requires no more 

 for the embedding of the canoes, than that along the flat marshes of 

 the Clyde there should have existed considerable swamps, lying very 

 low, and subject to inundation every tide ; and that this may have 

 been the case dui-ing the last two thousand years is veiy probable. 

 This would give us a considerable rise in the surface of the ground in 

 those localities, but one less attributable to change from elevation than 

 to causes similar to those which are now giving a yearly increase in 

 surface on the Clyde between Helensburgh and Dumbarton, the 

 deposit of large masses of detritus over the widened mouth of the 

 estuary — in other words, the formation of a delta. And, that such a 

 supposition is by no means too extreme, the alterations which have 

 taken effect on the Clyde, within the period to which oiu- annals refer, 

 sufiSciently attest. 



But that the great geological changes in the relative levels of the 



