Circumpolar Land

Abstract

IN a previous letter* I have endeavoured to show that the land surrounding the North Pole is rising in a continuous and definite area. I find that what I there said about the land north of America is very scanty and unsatisfactory, and before proceeding to the next part of my subject, I wish to strengthen it somewhat. Speaking of the eastern part of Melville Island, Captain Parry says one of the Hecla's men brought to the boat a narwhal horn, which he found on a hill more than a mile from the sea. Sergeant Martin and Captain Sabine's servant brought down to the beach several pieces of fir tree, which they found nearly buried in the sand, at the distance of 300 or 400 yards from the present high-water mark, and not less than thirty feet above the sea level (Parry's Voyage, 1819, 1820, p. 68). Again, “in the north of Melville Island, two pieces of drift wood were found, ten or twenty feet above the present sea level, and both partly buried in the sand” (p. 193). Again, speaking of west of the same island, “The land gains upon the sea, as it is called, in process of time, as it has certainly done here, from the situation in which we found the drift wood and the skeletons of whales” (p. 235).