NO. IQ NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK 115 



great array of evidence, tending to reduce the interval from hundreds 

 of thousands to a very few thousand years. 



Wright's Greenland Ice Fields and The Ice Age in North America 

 long ago presented this matter strongly, though without converting 

 every one. More recently in the Anthropologist he has suggested 

 5000 B. C., and perhaps the prevailing estimate of the interval since 

 the beginning of the withdrawal of the only ice-sheet which can have 

 directly affected the fortunes of man would now make it less than 

 eight times the nine hundred years since the coming of Thorfinn, 

 though there are some dissentients. 



Of course the lifting forces or the resistance may have varied in 

 stress from time to time, for reasons not readily to be fathomed, 

 or some other crustal movements may have interposed, or there may 

 have been counteracting influences yet unknown. Also there may 

 have been local eddy-like exceptions of downward crumpling or earth- 

 quake depression, 1 as perhaps on the shore of the Bay of Acadia, 

 not affecting the Atlantic coast. This depression seems to have 

 ended long ago, and may perhaps be paired with the convulsion that 

 sank so much land, leaving tree stumps at the bottom of lakes and 

 in marshes near New Madrid, Missouri, early in the nineteenth 

 century. 



Perhaps there has not been sufficient search for direct evidence 

 in situ of uplift along the Nova Scotian coast such as we have so 

 strikingly from Labrador and the upper part of the Maine sea- 

 front. Locally there is some scientific opinion or feeling that this 

 probably has not occurred. Indeed a positive descent 2 of the shore 

 at certain points, notably Louisbourg, used to be inferred from the 

 submergence of the old French works. But later investigation * 

 has shown that the facts do not call for such an inference, the military 

 architects having planted their embankments in the water; and no 

 change either way in elevation can be said to be directly proved. 

 There has not been time for any conspicuous effect, and the shifting 

 of water currents and of sand, or other local conditions may 

 apparently reduce it. 



Nova Scotian direct evidence not counting either way, we must 

 accept for guide the action of natural laws shown to have taken 

 effect on the relatively more southern, as well as the more northern, 



1 J. W. Dawson: Acadian Geology, p. 3; also supplement, pp. 13-21. 

 2 Gessner: in Journ. Geol. Soc. London, vol. 18, p. 36. 



3 H. S. Poole : Subsidence of the Atlantic Coast Line of Nova Scotia. Trans. 

 Nova Scotian Inst. of Science, vol. n, p. 262 and Mclntosh, p. 264. 



