56 W J MCGEE — UNIFORMITARIANISM AlSD DEFORMATION. 



In 1819 a severe earthquake devastated the delta of the Five Rivers in 

 western India, and throughout an immense area the quaking land sank 

 and the ocean stretched over it to a depth of from one to three yards, 

 while the vast salt marsh known as the Rann of Kach was greatly ex- 

 tended ; but no appreciable horizontal movement accompanied this ver- 

 tical sinking of the land about the mouth of the Indus. 



The New Jersey shore, like that of Holland, is sinking and the ocean 

 is encroaching upon it. The movement is slow, so slow that the rise 

 of the waters is perceived only when a great storm beats on the shore, 

 undermining the towns and throwing up sand beaches across the estu- 

 aries, each farther inland than its predecessor ; yet millions of dollars 

 are lost by the invasion of the ocean during each decade, and from gen- 

 eration to generation it is found that the headlands are eaten away, that 

 tidal marshes have become sea-bottom, that upland trees are poisoned 

 by the brine, and that the estuaries slowly but surely creep upstream, 

 while the sandbars by which they are bounded follow with equal pace ; 

 and the invasion has continued from century to century until the ocean 

 liows over the stumps and roots of brine-killed upland trees and until 

 whole forests have been drowned and buried in ticlelevel slime, so that 

 the mining of buried forests was long a profitable occupation of the Jer- 

 seymen. So far as the records of history and of submerged forests go, 

 they indicate that the sinking of the land is continuous at a rate of some 

 two feet in each century; yet no unmistakable record of horizontal move- 

 ment has been found.* 



The Gulf of Mexico is encroaching on its northern shores ; within the 

 century many historic villas overlooking its waters have been sapped, 

 while others have been saved only by removal ; I'Isle Derniere with its 

 aristocratic living freight was swallowed by the insatiate waters, and 

 other islands of lesser note have disappeared forever in the gulf. Here, as 

 on the New Jersey coast, upland trees have been poisoned by the brine 

 and their taproots are found in the bottom of the main even below low 

 tidelevel; and the estuaries march slowly but ceaselessly upstream, 

 v/hile the bounding sandbanks follow or else remain behind as great 

 keys skirting the entire coast, probably submerged and rebuilt further 

 inland from millennium to millennium. The rate of the invasion of the 

 waters, or of the sinking of the coast on which the invasion depends, has 

 not been measured, though the vertical movement would seem to be as 

 rapid as that of Holland or New Jersey ; yet no associated horizontal 

 movement has ever been detected. 



*It has been sliown by the writer (Geology of the Head of Chesapeake Bay: Seventh Annual 

 Report of the U. S. Geological Survey, 1888, p. 620 et seq.) that the topography and structure of the 

 inland mai'gin of the coastal plain suggest a movement with a lateral element analogous to that of 

 a landslip ; but the horizontal movement has never actually been detected. 



