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still progressing at the rate of 5 to 10 feet per century. Among 
other points. Bell cited the following; (1) old navigation records, 
and the increasing difficulty of reaching trading posts along the 
Bay by boat; (2) the well-preserved nature of shells of moder- 
ately deep-water species of molluscs in the clay shores of James 
Bay; (3) the drying up of salt-marsh feeding grounds of ducks 
and geese within memory of living man; (4) the appearance of 
trees on river islands during the same period; (5) the presence 
northward of remains of Eskimo beach dwellings up to elevations 
of 70 feet; (6) the present inappropriateness of many of the ab- 
original place-names of James Bay. On the other hand, Tyrrell 
(1896; 1913), Johnston (1939), Cooke (1942), and Williams (1948) 
are of the opinion that there has been relatively little uplift within 
historic time. 
It has already been noted that the Hudson Bay Lowlands of 
Manitoba is an area of Silurian and Ordovician formations. Of 
particular interest is the occurrence along the coast at Churchill 
of rocky ridges of “Churchill quartzite.'' In the words of Williams 
(1949), the geology of Churchill “was predetermined in Precam- 
brian time when the sand of the Churchill quartzite was deposited 
in a geosyncline or unstable basin. This is estimated as more 
than six hundred million years ago. After the sand was compacted 
into rock, great compressive forces in the earth's crust thrust it 
into folds, anticlines and synclines. Subsequent erosion removed 
higher and softer beds from the geosyncline to form the valley 
of the ancestral Churchill river. Shallow seas of later Ordovician 
time flooded the area, laying down their white dolomitic muds 
and in early Silurian seas reef corals fastened themselves to 
quartzite ridges. No legible records remain of later Paleozoic, 
Mesozoic or early Tertiary time." As the Wisconsin ice-sheet 
of Pleistocene time melted, “it was replaced by water in the 
great Hudson Bay Basin, which was then much larger than now. 
The plastic crust of the earth gradually adjusted itself to the 
lessening load and rose some 350 feet or more, leaving raised 
beaches and remains of sea shells far inland. The great cold 
of the ice age and the long post-glacial winters drove the frost 
line deep into the gravels and sands resulting in the 'perma- 
frost' of today. The interior continental climate, the arctic 
