Phenom., p. 308) on Digges Island at tlie Hudson Bay coast of Labrador, 70 or 
80 feet above sealevel. Another curious remain, from the time of eskimo settlement 
in the farthest nortb, may also be explained as connected with a comparatively 
recent elevation of the land. Greely, Report, p. 31, mentions the appearance of 
winter habitations at the shore of Lake Hazen, in the interiör of northern Elles- 
mereland, east of the outlet into Ruggles River. It seems not to have made any 
impression on him, but if we hold it together with the conditions of existence 
peculiar for the eskimos, we must conclude that a considerable change has occurred 
since the period when they hved here. The present nature of the surrouuding 
country, rich and luxuriant as it is in vegetation for its highartic situation, would 
not afford any possibility to exist more than for a very short time upon its produc- 
tions. Tlie trout Hving in the lake hardly counts at all, and tlie game soon would 
be so lessened in number and scared away from the vicinity, as to make it im- 
possible for an eskimo settlement to pass even a single winter here. The natural 
winter stations of tlie eskimo are at the seashore, where seals can be caught all 
through the winter. But in Lady Franklin Bay seals are hardly so abundant now 
as to afford means of subsistance for au eskimo population. 
The explanation may, however, probably be found in another statement of 
Greely (1. c, p. 21) where the gradient of Ruggles River is said to be in the 
average about 20 feet in a mile. Now the lenght of the river valley, from the 
bottom of Chandler Fjord to Lake Hazen, is somewhat less than 20 miles, and 
thus will give a height of, at the utmost, 400 feet above sealevel for the surface 
of the lake. With the rate of elevation we have to reckon with here, it will 
consequently take us only a few thousand years to reach back to the time when 
Lake Hazen was still a branch of Lady Franklin Bay, and then the eskimo may 
have encountered no difficulty in procuring their necessaries there. But that will 
date the eskimo immigration farther back than is perhaps generally supposed, and 
when I have eutered so far upon a subject which may seem to have little to do 
with the history of the flora, I have done it beeause I look upon it as not un- 
important for the solving of another question of the greatest interest for the present 
research, namely the existence of a warm postglacial period. When sorae years 
ago I wrote a small paper about the former range and migrations of the eskimo, 
it was indeed suggested to me by Gunnar Andersson that the deterioration of the 
climate which I looked upon as the cause of the disappearance of tlie inhabitants 
of the far north, might be identified with the general decHne of warrath after the 
warm period in question, but as it was at that time generally dated 9 or 10 thousand 
years back, I dared not proclaim so high an age for the eskimo colonization , and 
resorted to other ways of explanation, especially the elevation of the land (Eskim. 
utbredn., p. 188 — 190). The upheaval of the coasts, the emergence of former fjords 
as valleys, aud the gradual narrowing of the straits certainly haa contributed to a 
shortening of the period of open water, and thus driven the marine mammals, and 
with them the eskimo-population southward, but in the light of låter investigations 
