HO WORTH ON SURFACE ELEVATION IN ARCTIC REGIONS. 487 



" extends to the Youkon. The Indians have a tradition that the 

 " island was upheaved from the sea, an occurrence at least pos- 

 " sible. A large rock in the chain of the Aleutian Islands, known 

 " to the Russians as the Bajaslov Volcano, rose from the sea in 

 *' 1796." Zagoskin says : " That the spot where the fort {i. c, 

 " Fort Youkon) now stands has been covered by the sea within 

 *' the memory of the Indians living at the date of his visit in 1842 

 " and 1843." Again : " The entire country is sprinkled over 

 " with remains of Pliocene Mammals, Eleplias (?), Ovibos mos- 

 " chatus, &c. Beds of marl near Fort Youkon contain fresh- 

 " water shells still living in the vicinity." * Mr. Grant tells us 

 that in Vancouver's Island a raised sea-beach with scanty sandy 

 soil is mentioned as extending with a breadth of from 300 to 

 500 yards all along the north-east end of the harbour of Port 

 St. Juan.f 



In a paper on the Beaches of British Columbia, by Mr. Begbie, 

 I find the following paragraph : ^* Changes of level are now going 

 " on in a gradual way in some parts of the colony. At a point 

 *' near Frazer River, 13 miles south of Quesnelle, and again on 

 " that creek an affluent of Bonaparte River, I have noticed beaver- 

 '' dams on a slant, — abandoned dams, of course. A beaver-dam is 

 " never known to give way, never built on a stream that runs dry 

 '* in summer, and is, of course, as level as the surface of the water 

 " it is meant to retain. There had been no violent commotion, 

 " for the dams were all quite perfect. No water was now 

 ''■ running there. The old watercourse still visible and many 

 " cotton-trees still growing, perhaps 30 years old, but no signs of 

 " living Beavers."J 



To prove that this movement of the northern coasts of America 

 is shared by the interior of the country, we must examine the 

 great series of lakes that form such a notable feature in the phy- 

 sical geography of that continent. 



Captain Back says that the country from the Great Slave Lake 

 to the Polar Sea is strewn with boulders, &c., and has evidently 

 not been long reclaimed from the sea.§ 



The country forming the Hudson's Bay Territory is covered 

 with erratic boulders, and many patches of Pleistocene deposits, 

 containing marine shells of the present Arctic species {Mya trun- 

 cata, Saxicava rugosa, Sfc). The whole country is too flat for 

 these boulders to have been the debris of glaciers. They were 

 most probably left by floating ice and icebergs when the land was 

 submerged. The cliffs of Lake Winnipeg contain fresh-water 

 shells still living in the lower waters, such as U?iio, Helix, Pupa, 

 &c., often raised more than 100 feet above the present levels of 

 the streams, and appear to be ancient lake- or river-terraces, 

 leading to the belief that the existing series of lakes from the 

 St. Lawrence northward were once united in one or more vast 



* " Journal of the Royal Geographical Society," vol. xxxviii. 



t Ibid., vol. xxvii. p. 285. % Ibid., vol. v. p. 132. 



§ Ibid., vol. vi. p. 1. 



