ELEVATION OF THE LAND. 187 



ining the time which the land whereon they were 

 found has been in emerging from the sea and at- 

 taining its present level. My own impression, for 

 many reasons, is, that the whole of Spitzbergen has 

 been gradually rising within the last few hundred 

 years, and that this upheaval is still continuing. 



It is perhaps impossible to judge of the length 

 of time which such enormous bones may endure in 

 a climate like this, where they are bound up in ice 

 for eight or nine months out of the twelve ; but 

 allowing, at a guess, four hundred years for bones 

 lying at an elevation of forty feet, which is about 

 the highest at which I have found entire skeletons, 

 and adding twelve feet of water for the whale to 

 have floated in when he died there, we shall arrive 

 at thirteen feet per century as the rate of eleva- 

 tion. 



From the position of the eleven jaw-bones, etc., 

 which I have just mentioned, and from the fact of 

 so many lying together in a slight hollow, I am in- 

 clined to believe that these are the remains of whales 

 killed by man, and that they were towed into this 

 hollow (then a shallow bay) for the purpose of be- 

 ing flensed there. We learn from the accounts of 

 the early whale-fishers that their usual practice was 

 to flense their whale3 in the bays ; and, in fact, that 

 the whales were so abundant close to the shore, that 

 the ships did not require to leave their anchorage 

 in the bays at all. It was about the year 1650 

 that the whale-fishery in the bays of Spitzbergen 



