riLLma up of fjokds. 137 



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CHAPTER XVII. 



FILLING UP OF THE FJOKDS BY MAJIINB AND FLUVIAL ALLUVIUM. 



The comparative study of all the shores leads thus to the confirmation 

 of this fact, that fjords are only met with on the coasts of cold 

 countries, and that, with equality of temperature, they are much more 

 numerous and better developed on the western coasts, than on those 

 turned to the east. Why does this strange geographical contrast 

 occur between the various shores according to the position which 

 they occupy to the north or south, to the west or east ? "Why have 

 the strands and even the cliffs, bathed by a warm or temperate atmo- 

 sphere, assumed in the outline of their curves such a great regularity, 

 while the valleys, opened in the thickness of the plateaux of Scandi- 

 navia, Greenland, and Patagonia, have preserved their primitive form ? 

 A cause whose effects are produced at the same time and in the same 

 manner at the two extremities of the continents, in the northern 

 islands of America and Europe and in the Magellanic Isles, must 

 necessarily have been a great geological phenomenon, acting during 

 an entire age of our planet. 



This phenomenon was the special climate which during the glacial 

 period made itself felt on the surface of the globe, and transformed 

 the mountain snows into long rivers of ice. The map speaks for itself, 

 so to say ; it relates clearly how the fjords, those ancient indentations 

 of the coast-line, have been maintained in their primitive state by the 

 prolonged sojourn of glaciers.* In fact, the cold period, the un- 

 equivocal witnesses of which are still to be seen even in the tropics 

 and under the equator, at the foot of the Andes and in the valley of 

 the Amazon, naturally lasted longer in the vicinity of the poles than 

 under the torrid zone and in the temperate regions. This glacial 

 period, which terminated perhaps thousands of centuries ago on the 

 burning shores of Brazil and Columbia, has ceased at a relatively 

 recent epoch on the coasts of France and England. At an age still 



* See in Vol. I. tte chapter entitled, Snow and Glaciers— Oscar Peschel, Ausland, 1866. 



