146 G. M. DAWSON — COASTS OF BERING SEA AND VICINITY. 



throughout the region over which this pressure was exerted seems cer- 

 tain, and I am inclined to suppose that it may have had much to do 

 with the great later Pliocene uplift and subsequent depression to which 

 the British Columbian region appears to have been subjected * 



One of the most remarkable features connected with the Bering sea 

 region is the entire absence of any traces of a general glaciation. State- 

 ments to the effect that Alaska, as a whole, showed no such traces were 

 early made by Dallf and concurred in by Whitney. The result of my 

 later investigations in British Columbia and along the adjacent coasts 

 have been to show that such original statements were altogether too wide ; 

 that a great Cordilleran glacier did exist in the western part of the con- 

 tinent, but that it formed no part of any hypothetical polar ice-cap, and 

 that large portions of northwest America lay beyond its borders.^ 



Statements made by Mr John Muir, in which he not only attributed 

 every physical feature noted by him in Bering sea to the action of glacia- 

 tion, but even expressed the opinion that Bering sea and strait repre- 

 sented a hollow produced by glaciation, § remain altogether unsupported. 

 It might be unnecessary even to refer to them but for the fact that they 

 relate to a region for which the data on this subject from other sources 

 are so small. No traces have been found of general glaciation by land 

 ice in the region surrounding Bering sea, while the absence of erratics 

 above the actual sealine show that it was never submerged for any length 

 of time below ice-encumbered waters. 



These facts, moreover, connect themselves with similar ones relating to 

 the northern parts of Siberia in a manner which will be at once obvious 

 to any student of the glacial period. 



Kespecting the latest changes in elevation of the land, it may be stated 

 that in several widely separated places there is evidence of a recent slight 

 general uplift. This was noted at Unalaska, Attn, Bering island. Saint 

 Paul island and Saint Matthew island, but the amount of elevation iadi- 

 cated is small, being in fact from 10 to 30 feet only. 



* Trans. Royal Soe. Canada, vol. vii, see. i\f, p. 54. 



t Alaska Coast Pilot, 1869, pp. 195, 196; Alaska and its Resources, pp. 460, 461. 



t Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. xxxiv, p. 119; vol. xxxvii, p. 283 ; Report of Progress, Geol Surv. 

 Can., 1877-'78, pp. 136 B, 151 B ; Trans. Royal Soc. Canada, vol. vii, sec. iv, plate ii, map 4. 

 g Report of the Cruise of the Corwin, 1881, p. 147. 



