THE LAND IN CERTAIN PARTS OF SWEDEN. 19 



memory of persons now living ; and its gradual extension here, and in other places to 

 the north and south, is attributed by the natives to a slow but constant change in the 

 relative level of land and sea. In this place the deposition of fluviatile sediment must 

 cooperate with other causes ; but the shallowing of the water and its conversion into 

 land are too universal to be explained by sedimentary accumulations alone. Prepa- 

 rations are making to remove the harbour farther from the town, in consequence, as 

 I was assured, of the continued fall of the water rendering it every year more difficult 

 for ships to reach the ancient wharfs. 



I visited two marks near Gefle, one of them cut in 1731 in the island of Lofgrund, 

 twelve miles north-east of that port, and another made in 1820, about six miles farther 

 north. The first of these marks (that of Lofgrund *) was carved by one Rudberg in 

 1731, on a fixed rock of mica-schist, in the middle of a small sheltered bay on the 

 east side of the island. The mica-schist is very hard and full of garnets, the highest 

 part of the rock being only four feet above the water, and its length and breadth 

 about fourteen feet. There is a depth of water of about seven fefet and a half on the 

 side where the mark is made. The annexed sketch (fig. 10.) will give some idea of 

 the outline of that side of the rock and of the mark. 



Fig. 10. 

 Rock in the Harbour of Lofgrund. 



a. The upper mark. h. The lower mark. 



The horizontal line, which is somewhat irregularly cut, is known to have been 

 originally made at the mean water-level. When I measured it on the 3rd of July 

 1834, this line was two feet six inches and a half above the mean level of the water ; 

 but as the wind was blowing from the east-north-east, the chief pilot of Gefle, who 

 accompanied me, declared that 1 ought to add at least four inches more in order to 

 express the full diff*erence of the ancient as compared to the present level of the sea. 

 It will appear that I had afterwards good reason to believe that this estimate was not 

 exaggerated. Even when this allowance is made, the fall, in the space of somewhat 

 more than a century, is not quite equal to three feet. There is a lower horizontal 

 mark two feet five inches long, irregular and without any date^, which, when I ex- 



* Sometimes called Lofgrundet, the final et being the definite article in Swedish. 



d2 



