158 Rhodora [JuLy 
almost the entire coastal bench, cut through only by the deepest 
channels such as that from the Gulf of Maine and Cabot Strait, 
would have been dry land. But if Daly’s more conservative figures 
(“between twenty-five and forty-five fathoms’’) are taken it is appar- 
ent that, although much of the coastal bench would have been dry 
land, there would have been innumerable shallow channels between 
the uncovered areas. 
Furthermore, it is quite apparent that the height of the now sub- 
merged coastal bench, composed of friable deposits augmented by great 
masses of loose terminal moraine material, must, during and after its 
submergence, have been tremendously reduced not only by the denud- 
ing action of the waves but by the strong water-currents aided by the 
winds. We can gain some conception of this rapid reduction of the 
height and area of these remnants of the old coastal plain by observa- 
tions made on Sable Island.. In his account of Sable Island, Pro- 
fessor John Macoun said: “When the Admiralty survey of the island 
was made in 1799 it was found to be thirty-one miles long and two 
broad, though according to the older French charts it had been forty 
miles in length and two and one quarter in breadth. Lieut. Burton, 
who surveyed the island in 1808, found it to be thirty miles long and 
two wide”. In 1855, according to Sir William Dawson, the island 
was “about 23 miles in length, and from one mile to one and a half 
in breadth.”? Des Barre’s charts of 1779 show that some of the 
hills (not the highest he stated) were 146 feet above sea-level. Today 
the charts show an island less than 22 miles long, and according 
to Macoun the highest hills “are now but little over 100 feet” 
in height. Macoun further says in regard to Sable Island: “The 
popular opinion that as it wastes in one part it makes in another is 
fallacious. Another erroneous idea is that the wind wastes the 
hills and levels the land and causes destruction. The wind is a builder 
and the sea is the leveller. The wind certainly shifts the sand but 
it cuts out in one place only to build up in another. By it the sand is 
blown inward, but none to sea, except perhaps to a small extent dur- 
ing a very heavy gale. On the other hand, the currents that are set 
in motion by the winds, and others of a permanent character, are 
constantly cutting away the sand and carrying it out to sea, and if 
? Macoun, Geol. Surv. Can., Ann. Rep. n. s. xii. 213, 214A (1902). 
* Dawson, Acad. Geol. 380 (1855). 
