NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK 113 



have hardly glanced at as they swept by. What would a mile of sand 

 be to such craft and such spirits as theirs? Even a man in a row-boat 

 would not have time to wear} of that. Make it ten miles, and the 

 case is yet even absurdly hopeless ; for ten consecutive miles of strand 

 cannot be found along the mainland of Nova Scotia. Thirty miles or 

 so of low shore may be found perhaps in eastern Cape Breton Island, 

 but would be little better if above water then. The plain fact is that 

 the saga must be given up as false, in this part at least, and since this 

 is of its very spinal cord as untrustworthy altogether or we must 

 assume the erroneous transfer to this point of an observation made 

 elsewhere, unless there be some adequate explanation. And there is 

 such explanation. The coast line now consists generally of low cliffs 

 or banks, not comparable to the lofty precipices of Grand Manan, but 

 let us suppose that this is not constant in height, but that, for good 

 reason, it has been rising continually. Reckoning back, it would be 

 correspondingly lower at any given time, supposing no counteracting 

 cause intervened to reverse or check it or vary the rate of emergence. 



Our starting point is about a present average of 25 feet, perhaps 

 rather more as indeed my own slight and local observations would 

 make me suppose. But the above has been given me as a rough 

 approximation by a journalist formerly resident in that province, 

 and is pretty well confirmed by a Boston yachtsman and an intelli 

 gent fisherman of Grand Manan, both personally familiar with that 

 shore. Of course it is barely provisional, exactness not being hoped 

 for. 



It does not seem to have occurred to anyone concerned in such 

 researches that a definite and steady change may have been going on. 

 Rev. Mr. Slafter offers the nearest approach, that I recall, to such a 

 view, in the suggestion that islands have shifted and new land has 

 formed, making identification impracticable but that is obviously 

 far from presenting a consciousness of explainable, progressive 

 change. Now conceive the Nova Scotian seaboard lowered by the 

 25 feet or more of its present height, that is, brought down to water- 

 level and dipped a little under with slight narrowing of the penin 

 sula, in its mainland part, and partial obliteration of the eastern side 

 of the now hollow insular terminal part called Cape Breton Island 

 and you will have something not wholly unlike the long strands of 

 New Jersey or the peninsula east of the Chesapeake, only with the 

 hill country much nearer. It was the first introduction of the sur 

 prised northern visitors to the characteristic American coast line. 



The probable reason for such a change is simple enough. The 

 withdrawal northward of the great glacial ice-cap, from half a mile 



