HOWORTH ON SURFACE ELEVATION IN ARCTIC REGION. 493 



feet broad, ploughed up among the boulders, and presumed to be 

 done by icebergs. It was on a gentle slope, al)out 20 foot above 

 the sea, and extended from north-east to south-west, exactly the 

 run of the current-ice at the present day.* The seal-fishers told 

 Mr. Lament that the land was rising, and that the Right Whale 

 had forsaken the Spitzbergen seas, which had become too shallow 

 for it. 



The German Expedition of 1869 also found heaps of Drift-wood 

 20 feet high above high-water-mark on the south-east shore of 

 Spitzbergen. 



East of Nova Zembla Captain Mask, who made a journey 

 there in 1871, found the barren and sandy islands knoAvn as the 

 Gulf-Stream Islands. In the spot where these now are, the 

 Dutch, in 1594, found and measured a sandbank in soundings of 

 18 fathoms, showing an upheaval here of 100 feet in 300 years. 

 In the same year Captain Nils Johnson landed in the country 

 called Wiche Land in the map of 1617, situated about 30° east 

 longitude and 78° north latitude. He says that the shores there 

 to a distance of 100 miles inland, and to a height of about 20 feet 

 above high-water-mark, are covered with drift-wood. | 



We may now return to the mainland of Europe, and continue 

 our survey eastwards. 



Pennant long ago observed that the White Sea and the Baltic 

 were but recently joined together by a strait. He says the 

 Lakes Sig, Onda, and Wigo form successive links from the Lake 

 Onega to the White Sea. The Lake Siama almost cuts Finland 

 through from North to South. Its northern end is not remote 

 from Lake Onda, and the southern extends very near to the Gulf 

 of Finland, a space of nearly 40 Swedish, or 260 English miles. 

 These were probably part of the bed of the ancient Streights {sic') 

 which joined the White and Baltic Seas. J Great portions of 

 Finland, which is known to the natives as Suomenia, or the land 

 of swamp, has all the character of a recently emerged land. It 

 is sprinkled over with lakes separated by flats of sand covered 

 vv^ith moss. The level of some of these lakes is rapidly falling, 

 which means that the land is rising. We are told this especially 

 of the River Vosca and the Lake Samia, of which it is the only 

 feeder. In the spring of 1818, Lake Souvando, on the west of 

 Lake Ladoga, broke down the isthmus that separated it; its 

 waters were lowered 5*026 fathoms, and much land was left dry. 



Sir Charles Lyell tells us, that on the coast of Finland, as on 

 that of Sweden, the fishermen have traditions that what is now 

 dry land was in their fathers' days water. The surface of Fin- 

 land generally is covered with traces of a prodigious diluvial 

 revolution in recent times. 



MM. de Keyserling, Murchison, and de Verneuil have found at 

 points 250 miles to the south of the White Sea, on the banks of 

 the Dwina and the Vaga, beds of sand and mud containing several 



* *' Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc," vol. xvi. p. 428. 

 f " Ocean Highways," pp. 247 and 292. 

 X " Appendix to Arctic Zoology," p. 23. 



