32 j 



GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA. 



Dr. Bell on 



subsidence of 

 sea level. 



Other views. 



either point, is a cut bank of sandy clay full of small boulders, having 

 a face of fifty feet in its highpst parts. Behind this bank the surface- 

 of the island is an undulating plain, covered with many boulders and 

 dotted with small shallow lakes which fill every depression of its sur- 

 face. With the exception of a few solitary stunted white spruce, no- 

 trees grow on the island, its surface being covered only with low arctic 

 flowering plants, grasses, sedges and mosses. Two miles beyond the- 

 north point and seemingly an extension of it, is a small low boulder 

 island about one mile in circumference. 



On the northern end of Solomon's Temple great quantities of drift- 

 wood are heaped up from ten to twenty and occasionally thirty feet 

 above ordinary high-water mark ; on the shores of all the other islands 

 similar piles of wood are found, most abundantly on their north sides ; 

 that on the higher levels is generally greatly decayed and composed 

 chiefly of cedar. The presence of these piles of driftwood at such 

 high levels has been taken as evidence of a rapid elevation of the land 

 around Hudson Bay. Dr. E. Bell places the rate of upheaval of the 

 land or " subsidence of the water " at from five to ten feet a century- 

 Other evidence than that of the driftwood is required to sustain such a 

 theory, as its presence at these high levels above ordinary tide may 

 be accounted for in another manner than by a rapid elevation of the 

 shores and islands. Owing to the shallow state of the water near the 

 shores of the islands and mainland of James' Bay, the wind, when 

 blowing on the land, has great effect in causing abnormal rises of 

 tide by forcing the water from the deeper parts of the bay over the 

 shallows ; an instance in case was observed by the writer while 

 anchored on the east side of Agoomski Island in a moderate gale from 

 the north-west, August 8th, 1881. Here the ordinary rise of tide does 

 not exceed five feet, yet after beaching his boat at 8 p.m., by midnight 

 the water was twelve feet deep showing a rise of seven feet at least 

 above the ordinary level. From this it i# easy to believe that extra- 

 ordinary gales in the late autumn at long intervals apart, would back 

 the water into the bay to such an extent as to cause a rise of tide 

 from ten to twenty feet above its ordinary level. These high tides, 

 accompanied by great breakers, would necessai-ily throw the older 

 and lighter wood, then on a high level, farther back, and pile newer 

 wood in front and below it, thus forming a state of affairs as at 

 present seen. 



Other facts tend to disprove a rapid elevation of land around James 

 Bay, at least in its southern part. Capt. Coates, in his notes on the 

 mouth of the Moose Eiver, written one hundred and fifty years ago, 

 describes it as it exists at the present time, with little or no change in 

 the state of the channel or shoals; if a rise of five or ten feet a century 



