TERRACED BEACHES. 
81 
which I had to-day of comparing the terrace and 
boulder lines of Mary River and Charlotte Wood Fiord 
enables me to assert positively the interesting fact of a 
secular elevation of the crust, commencing at some as 
yet undetermined point north of 76°, and continuing to 
the Great Glacier and the high northern latitudes of 
Grinnell Land. This elevation, as connected with the 
equally well-sustained depression of the Greenland coast 
south of Kingatok, is in interesting keeping with the 
same undulating alternation on the Scandinavian side. 
Certainly there seems to be in the localities of these 
elevated and depressed areas a systematic compensa¬ 
tion. 
“I counted to-day forty-one distinct ledges or shelves 
of terrace embraced between our water-line and the 
syenitic ridges through which Mary River forces 
itself. These shelves, though sometimes merged into 
each other, presented distinct and recognisable em¬ 
bankments or escarps of elevation. Their surfaces 
were at a nearly uniform inclination of descent of 5°, 
and their breadth either twelve, twenty-four, thirty- 
six, or some other multiple of twelve paces. This im¬ 
posing series of ledges carried you in forty-one gigantic 
steps to an elevation of four hundred and eighty feet; 
and, as the first rudiments of these ancient beaches left 
the granites which had once formed the barrier sea- 
coast, you could trace them passing from drift-strewn 
rocky barricades to cleanly-defined and gracefully-curved 
shelves of shingle and pebbles. I have studies of these 
terraced beaches at various points on the northern 
Vol II.—6 
