76 NOTES ON A SUMMER TOUR IN NORWAY. 
forces having at one time been extremely active in this part of the 
world, and that this mountain-making must have occurred, just as 
in our Highlands, subsequent to Silurian times, is proved by the 
fact that the Silurian rocks themselves have participated in the 
great movements as much as the beds underlying them; so that 
although we have no structural mountains now in Scandinavia, there 
have been such at a very remote period, a period so remote that, 
in fact, their foundations only remain, and even these have been 
planed off almost to a dead level. 
I now come to those wonderful fjords which so deeply tindeak 
the western coast of Scandinavia. These inlets only differ in 
point of magnitude from the sea lochs which are so numerous on 
the western coast of Scotland, and the two have, without 
doubt, had a common origin. What that may be we have now to 
consider. The old idea which was current in my school days, 
and which even now occasionally finds its way into our 
geographies, was that the fjords, firths, and sea lochs have all 
been excavated by marine action, and that they occur principally 
on the western coasts of European countries, because these 
coasts are more exposed to the battering action of the Atlantic 
waves. Now, whatever differences of opinion there may still be 
as to the exact manner in which fjords have been made, all 
geologists are agreed that they cannot have been formed in this 
manner, for a close study of marine action clearly proves that the 
tendency of the sea is to level the rocks which are lashed by its 
breakers, not to excavate deep and tortuous inlets. 
If we sail along a fjord or sea loch until we come to its head, 
we invariably find that it terminates in a glen or valley, and that 
no marked line of demarcation can be traced between the land 
valley watered by its stream and the sea valley filled with tidal 
water. It irresistibly forces itself on the mind that the agents 
which have been instrumental in excavating the land valley have 
also cut the valley in which the fjord now lies, for there is not the 
slightest line of demarcation in the sloping sides which contain 
both. If the level of the land were depressed, the fjord would 
extend farther up the valley; if, on the other hand, elevation of 
