Pack Island:—“The water-line in a narrow sound was polished and
striated in the direction of the sound, about N.N.W. This seems to be
fresh work done by heavy ice drifting from Sandwich Bay; _but, on the
other hand, stages with their legs in the sea, and resting on these
very rocks, are not swept away by the ice_” (p. 96). If these markings
were modern, why did not the “heavy ice” remove the small fir poles
supporting the fishing-stages?
Red Bay:—“Landed half-dressed, and found some striæ perfectly fresh at
the water-level, but weathered out a short distance _inland_” (p. 107).
The striations “inland” could not have been made by modern icebergs;
and it does not follow that because the markings at the water-level
were not weathered they were produced by modern ice.
These are the evidences which he found that icebergs striate rocks,
on a coast of which he says that, during the year he visited it, “the
winter-drift was one vast solid raft of floes and bergs more than 150
miles wide, and perhaps 3,000 feet thick at spots, driven by a whole
current bodily over one definite course, year after year, since this
land was found” (p. 85).
But Mr. Campbell himself freely admits that the floating ice which
comes aground along the shores does not produce striæ. “It is
sufficiently evident,” he says, “_that glacial striæ are not produced
by thin bay-ice_” (p. 76). And in “Frost and Fire,” vol. ii., p. 237,
he states that, “from a careful examination of the water-line at many
spots, it appears that bay-ice grinds rocks, _but does not produce
striation_.”
“It is impossible,” he continues, “to get at rocks over which heavy
icebergs now move; but a mass 150 miles wide, perhaps 3,000 feet thick
in some parts, and moving at the rate of a mile an hour, or more,
_appears to be an engine amply sufficient_ to account for striæ on
rising rocks.” And in “American Tramp,” p. 76, he says, “_striæ must be
made_ in deep water by the large masses which seem to pursue the even
tenor of their way in the steady current which flows down the coast.”
Mr. Campbell, from a careful examination of the sea-bottom along the
coast, finds that the small icebergs do not produce striæ, but the
large ones, which move over rocks impossible to be got at, “must”
produce them. They “appear” to be amply sufficient to do so. If the
smaller bergs cannot striate the sea-bottom, why must the larger ones
do so? There is no reason why the smaller bergs should not move as
swiftly and exert as much pressure on the sea-bottom as the larger
ones. And even supposing that they did not, one would expect that the
light bergs would effect on a smaller scale what the heavy ones would
do on a larger.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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