22 GLACIAL A^'D SUEFACE GEOLOGY OF THE PACIFIC COAST. 



are now doinf on a grand scale. All the conditions required for the forma- 

 tion of fiords are illustrated by the phenomena displayed on the coast of the 

 Scandinavian Peninsula, as will be noticed further on. 



The facts, then, connected with the occurrence of deeply indented coasts 

 and fiords are briefly as follows : A coast-line may be very irregular and 

 deeply indented where the adjacent land is low and level, as, for instance, 

 the east side of Denmark. This is simply the result of the wearing away 

 of the easily yielding land by the ocean. Such coasts are very different in 

 character from tliose of typical fiord regions. These must be connected 

 with high mountain ranges, and the fiords are the result of erosion of their 

 sides by water. Hence they occur chiefly in regions of large precipitation. 

 But the gorges thus eroded do not become fiords until subsidence of the 

 range has brought them down into such a ])Osition that the water of the ocean 

 can enter and partly fill the precipitous valleys which have thus been cre- 

 ated. Should the range remain stationary in elevation after the decline of 

 the period of greatest precipitation, the eroded valleys would gradually Ije- 

 come filled with detrital material, unless protected from this by becoming 

 partly filled with ice at a later period, in consequence of a change of climate, 

 the nature and cause of which will be explained further on. 



A depression of the crust appears, for some reason not yet explained, to 

 have been going on during the most recent geological ages in high northern 

 latitudes. Hence we find that peculiar sequence of conditions necessary for 

 originating truly typical fiord-coasts to have occurred only in a few regions, 

 although approximations to these peculiar indentations are found in all lati- 

 tudes and in various countries. 



It must be admitted, however, that erosion has not done all the work of 

 forming the precipitous valleys which have become converted into fiords. 

 The rano-es in which these grand gorges and transverse cuts occur have been 

 elevated by internal forces ; it is highly improbable that the great masses of 

 rock were brought into their final position with smooth, vmbroken surfaces. 

 On the contrary, the uplifted crust must, in many places at least, have been 

 broken, shattered, and left with the most irregular outlines. The features 

 of the country have thus been rough-hewn, and the work of water has been 

 carried on in strict subordination to that previously effected by mightier and 

 deeper-seated causes. Such is the opinion of the present writer, although he 

 is Avell aware that, as already suggested, there are other geologists who think 

 very differently, and who, in point of fact, consider that nearly all the sculp- 



