TEE ICE AGE. i^y 



slaty rock of Norway fails to retain the erosive markings of the ice- 

 plough, and has lost frequently its graven surface through frost. 

 Again, the more characteristic traces must be found upon the steep 

 slopes and narrowed exits of the snow-fields, and these are not always 

 readily approached. 



Along Drontheim Fiord, and in many localities over the shore and 

 bays, the roches moiitonnees appear repeatedly, and at Sognefiord 

 the hard conglomerate, rounded into these huge knobs, is graven with 

 channels and grooves. At Moranger Fiord the impressions increase in 

 distinctness as we approach the glacial ridges which overhang it. The 

 Bandhuus Glacier at one time extended to the sea, and the mingled 

 heap of rocks it pushed before it now lies, a crescent of desolation, in 

 its old path. One hundred years ago, by local traditions, the Suphelle 

 Glacier, among the Justedals glaciers, extended across the entire valley 

 into which it now debouches, and a series of recent moraines indicates 

 its retreat. About 3,600 feet in front of the Krondal and Nygaard 

 glaciers, terminal moraines, unmistakably modern, are seen, while the 

 evidence of their erosive action is found in the increasing definiteness 

 of the rocky striations as we advance over the land last scored toward 

 the glacier, this same track being sown with bowlders and pebbles,' 

 relics of their past ravages. Two hundred feet above the Nygaard, on 

 the face of the cliff, we can read, as legibly as we do the record of the 

 fallen tide, the annals of its past increase ; and local tradition, stories of 

 destruction, removal of villages and houses, corroborate this ocular 

 examination. In short, in Norway, as in the Alps, the characteristics 

 of glacial denudation, as seen in the forces now at work, appear to 

 perpetuate the memory of agencies which, on a magnificent scale, 

 operated upon continents. 



Turning our eyes from the picturesque surprises of the Scandinavian 

 cliffs and streams, let us fix them upon the multitudinous slopes and 

 the confused outlines of the Himalaya Mountains, as they rise to the 

 plains of Thibet, and read their lesson. Here we shall encounter the 

 same arctic currents cleaving the fissures 



" Of vales more wild and mountains more sublime." 



Upon their surface we see the same long avenues of bowlders, fed in 

 their tedious course from every faltering cliff or frost-riven peak, and 

 their ancient channels indelibly indicated in the disordered debris of 

 rocks and pebbles filched from quarries leagues away. 



The Himalaya Mountains mark the northern frontier of India, and 

 form the most important section of that long axis of elevation which 

 reaches from the Bosporus to the Pacific, and separates, as a similar 

 girdle does in Europe, the northern plains and table-land from the low 

 peninsulas and milder districts of the south. The Himalayas ascend 

 to the grandest heights, and in their sublime elevation crown the con- 

 tinental water-shed with earth's most stupendous peaks. Their passes 



VOL. XIT. — 7 



