74 NOTES ON A SUMMER TOUR IN NORWAY. 
and the direction of the chain still, to a considerable extent, 
corresponds with the original axis of elevation. 
Now, in Norway we have no indication of the existence of any 
structural ranges like this. Certainly the rocks which constitute 
the mountain masses occasionally exhibit signs of vast crumpling 
and displacement, but this occurred at a time so enormously 
remote that all the inequalities originally due to this displacement 
have long since been erased by the ordinary denuding forces of 
running water, frost, and ice ; and the present mountains do not 
correspond in any way with these old axes of elevation. 
The mountains of Scandinavia are not due to earth crumpling, 
but have been cut out of a vast elevated plateau, of which the 
whole peninsula is a part. This plateau, or table-land, slopes 
very gradually on the eastern side to the Plains of Sweden, and 
terminates in low-lying cliffs on the Gulf of Bothnia, whilst on 
the western side the plateau, from its highest elevation, of from 
7,000 to 8,000 feet, slopes much more rapidly to the North Sea. 
Those of you who are geologists will understand me when I say 
that this great plateau is a plain of marine denudation, and has 
really been at one time the bottom of a very ancient sea. I do 
not mean the sea in which the Cambrian or Silurian sediment, 
which constitutes a portion of its mass, was originally laid down— 
I mean one of much more modern date than that, but, nevertheless, 
a very ancient one. During. and after its elevation to its present 
height, Nature has been at work upon the plateau with her 
formidable sculpturing tools of rain, frost, ice, and running water, 
doing her best to destroy it as fast as it was elevated. Like many 
other severe struggles, the matter has ended in a compromise, and 
whilst not succeeding in planing it down to a dead level, the sub- 
aérial forces have scored it with deep valleys, and divided it into 
separate mountain masses. The portions of this great table-land 
which have been thus separated from each other, form isolated 
mountains and vast, dreary plateaux, which, when they rise above 
the snow-line, form the gathering-grounds of extensive snow- 
fields, from which glaciers descend on all sides through the 
valleys. One of the largest and best known of these isolated 
