MAKING THE ROCK BOTTOM. 



13 



the land of Cohasset is growing higher or lower, he would 

 probably say, it is not changing ; and yet nature has 

 been recording a slow subsidence as lately as a few 

 hundred years past, and probably to-day it is more rapid 

 by far than the movement of the granite referred to. 



For example, in the salt meadow of the Gulf where 

 the channel cuts the banks, there are to be seen when the 

 tide is out the protruding roots of alder trees which could 

 not have grown in a place so much below salt water. 

 Furthermore there are three feet of marsh mud on top 

 of the clay where those roots grew, which have been 

 deposited while the land has been settling. How old are 

 the roots .■* Certainly not four thousand years ! And yet 

 if the earth here at Cohasset has settled four feet in these 

 four thousand years, that would be at the rate of five 

 miles in twenty-five million years. Not half as fast a 

 movement of the earth's surface is claimed for the 

 wrinkling which brought our granite up. 



There are many other places in Eastern Massachusetts 

 where nature has recorded the same subsidence in these 

 late years. 



At the mouth of Weir River in Hingham, on the north 

 side of Rockland Street, a little way from the Cohasset 

 boundary, cedar stumps can be seen in a meadow which 

 the salt water now overflows. Again, at Sandy Cove, 

 Cohasset, the mud of an ancient bog on the beach is now 

 exposed, showing that the sea has risen several feet since 

 the bog was formed. 



Down upon the Cape, in the town of Orleans, one may 

 see a forest of stumps several feet under the clear sea 

 water a quarter of a mile from shore. 



The slow falling or rising of the land is not incredible 

 when the facts are so plain as these. 



If the time allowance be sufficient there is no reason 

 therefore to doubt the ability of Cohasset to rise, even 

 to the extent necessary in order to expose the granite 

 which was made miles deep. 



