THE "GREAT ICE AGE." 131 



into several branches eastward. A glance at a good map 

 will show that here, according to my explanation of the origin 

 of the till, there should be the greatest of all the submarine 

 plains of till which the ancient Scandinavian glaciers have 

 produced, and of which the plains of till I saw on the coast 

 at Bodo (which lies just to the mouth of the Vest fjord, 

 where the Salten fjord flows into it), are but the slightly 

 inclined continuation. 



Some idea of this bank may be formed from the fact that 

 outside of the Lofodens the sea is 100 to 200 fathoms in 

 depth, that it suddenly shoals up to 16 or 20 fathoms on 

 the east side of these rocks, and this shallow plain extends 

 across the whole 50 or 60 miles between these islands and 

 the mainland.* It must not be supposed the fjords or inlets 

 of Scandinavia are usually shallower than the open sea; the 

 contrary is commonly the case, especially with the norrowest 

 and those which run farthest inland. They are very much 

 deeper than the open sea. 



If space permitted I could show that the great Storregen 

 bank, opposite Aalesund and Molde, where the Stor fjord, 

 Mold fjord, etc., were the former outlets of the glaciers 

 from the highest of all the Scandinavian mountains, and the 

 several banks of Fiumark, etc., from which, in the aggre- 

 gate, are taken another 20 or 30 millions of cod-fish annu- 

 ally, are all situated just where theoretically they ought to 

 be found. The same is the case with the great bank of 

 Newfoundland and the banks around Iceland, which are 



* The celebrated " MaelstrOm" is one of the currents that flow down 

 the submarine incline between these islands when the tide is falling. 

 Although I have ridiculed some of the accounts of this now innocent 

 stream, I am not prepared to assert that it was always as mild as at 

 present. If the ancient glaciers were stopped suddenly, as they'may 

 well have been, by the rocky barrier of Mosken, between Vaero and 

 Moskeneso, and they then suddenly concluded their deposition of till, 

 a precipice must have been formed between this and the deep sea out- 

 side the islands, down which the sea would pitch when the tide was 

 falling, and thus form some dangerous eddies. This cascade would 

 gradually obliterate itself by wearing down the precipitous wall to an 

 inclined plane such as at present exists, and down which the existing 

 current flows. 



