J. B. Tyrrell — Rising of land around Hudson Bay. 201 



the storm waves at high tide. Had the land in 1733 been 11 

 feet lower than it is at present, storm waves at the ordinary 

 flood tides would have regularly washed over the point, and it 

 is not likely that a structure of any kind would have then been 

 built. 



In his account of Hudson Bay, published in 1744, Sir Arthur 

 Dobbs, a man who has made himself very well acquainted with 

 the geography of Hudson's Bay, states that Fort Prince of 

 Wales is built " upon an eminence 40 feet high," * a per- 

 fectly natural exaggeration for a man looking at the fort in its 

 present position, 25 feet above mean tide level, but hardly 

 intelligible if the land was 10 or 11 feet lower than at present, 

 and the fort was but 15 feet above mean tide, and less than 

 8 feet above the top of spring tide. 



For several years between 1733 and 1747 Joseph Kobson, 

 an engineer, was stationed at Churchill to superintend the 

 building of this fort. About 1746 he made a survey of the 

 river for 10 miles up from its mouth, drafting a map which 

 was published by him in 1752.t This map, of which a reduced 

 copy is shown on page 202, shows the river at high and low 

 water, and the rocks and low marshy ground around it. The 

 conditions here shown are just such as exist at the present 

 time. The Mission House is now where Old Fort is marked 

 on the map, and the Hudson Bay Company's fur-trading post 

 is a few hundred yards farther towards the southwest. A 

 gently sloping strong flat, dry at low water, extends out for 

 about a mile to the low water channel, and low marshy ground, 

 but slightly above the level of high water, extends back from 

 high water mark. If the land had been even a few feet lower 

 in 1746 then it is at present, much of the marshy ground west 

 and southwest of the lagoon would have been covered with 

 water at high tide, while if it had been 10 feet lower the low 

 water mark would have been close to the foot of the " High 

 Kocks " north of the Old Fort, and only a couple of hundred 

 yards out from the shore opposite the present fur-trading post. 



On the same map the promontory on which Fort Prince of 

 Wales is built is shown connected by a narrow neck of land to 

 the main shore, and not as an island as stated by Dr. Bell, and 

 as this was doubtless the low rough rocky neck which in the 

 same place still rises a very few feet above the water, it seems 

 to have been necessary to build a bridge or causeway over 

 which stones for the fort could be hauled. The place of this 

 bridge, which seems to have crossed the head of the bay south 



* An account of the Countries adjoining to Hudson's Bay, by Arthur Dobbs, 

 Esq., London, 1744, p. 55. 



f An account of six years residence in Hudson's Bay, by Joseph Robson, Lon- 

 don, 1752. 



