480 N EW LAND. 



' Here the great builder of the earth, the sea, has piled up 

 layer upon layer of sand to a height of several thousand feet ; to 

 begin with, loose sand, in which is imbedded here and there 

 indistinct remains of a strain or stratum of coal, as if it would 

 show that the land it washed had had a vegetation and had sus- 

 tained life whose kind and importance posterity might be permitted 

 to gain an idea of, but not look upon. At any rate, up to this 

 date, no more abundant remains have been found. 



' When the sea left off its work, the layers of sand stiffened, 

 under the effects of other forces, into stone, became broken in 

 pieces and displaced with regularity, so that the north-westerly 

 edges of the fragments came to lie lower than the south-easterly 

 ones, and the whole expanse to look like a colossal ploughed field. 

 On this surface fell rain and snow, and then running water began 

 to chisel out forms in greater variety. First of all it ran in small 

 streamlets over each " furrow " and each slope, collected along the 

 upper edge of the underlying "furrow," and ran along it until it 

 came to a break, which it followed and thus continued on along the 

 next edge, and so on, until the water, now in the form of a river, 

 reached the margin, where it fell over in a steep fall. Little by 

 little the river dug down its bed, widened it behind and at the 

 sides, and conquered by degrees the additional furrows. 



' The aggregation of water from several directions now met, and, 

 in the shape of busy streams, hastened through the steep gullies to 

 the deep-cut valleys, with their precipitous walls and flat bottom, 

 through which the now largish river wound its way down to the 

 level country and the sea outside. 



' Low down the valley sides was land of stony clay, which, in 

 its lowest and dampest parts, supported a humble vegetation, 

 chiefly consisting of Andromeda in the damper places, and willow- 

 scrub on the comparatively dry grass-bogs. The screes were clad 

 with lichens and moss, more especially at their bases ; and below 

 the drifts which melt in the spring, I saw occasional patches of 

 moss, a tuft of heather, or some kind of grass. Sparse, but general, 

 were also quite a number of flowering plants, such as the little 

 violet saxifrage (Saxifraga oppositifolid), the Arctic poppy (Papaver 

 nudicaule), with its pale yellow flowers, and the mountain avens 



