The path of the glacial drift is
traced by geologists as far down the Atlantic coast as
the present site of New York, and in the central plain
of the continent it extended to what is now the state of
Missouri.
Facts seem to support the theory that before the Great
Ice Age the climate of the northern part of Canada was
very different from what it is now. It is very probable
that a warm if not a torrid climate extended for hundreds
of miles northward of the now habitable limits of the
Dominion. The frozen islands of the Arctic seas were once
the seat of luxurious vegetation and teemed with life.
On Bathurst Island, which lies in the latitude of 76
degrees, and is thus six hundred miles north of the Arctic
Circle, there have been found the bones of huge lizards
that could only have lived in the jungles of an almost
tropical climate.
We cannot tell with any certainty just how and why these
great changes came about. But geologists have connected
them with the alternating rise and fall of the surface
of the northern continent and its altitude at various
times above the level of the sea. Thus it seems probable
that the glacial period with the ice sheet of which we
have spoken was brought about by a great elevation of
the land, accompanied by a change to intense cold.
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