202 ELEVATION OF THE LAND, AND 



the higliest 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 ^er cen- 

 tury as the rate of elevation. 



Prom the position of the eleven jawbones, 

 &c., which I have just mentioned, and from 

 the fact of so many lying together in a 

 slight hollow, I am inclined to believe that 

 these are the remains of whales killed by 

 man, and that they were towed into this hol- 

 low (then a shallow bay), for the purpose of 

 being flensed there. We learn from the ac- 

 counts of the early whale-fishers that their 

 usual practice was to flense their whales 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 hays of Spitzbergen 

 was in its prime. Thus, supposing these 

 whales to have been killed in that bay two 

 hundred years ago, allowing three fathoms (the 

 very minimum) for the ship to have anchored 

 in, and adding the ten feet which the bones are 

 now above the sea-level, we have twenty-eight 

 feet of elevation in two hundred years, or very 



