324 RECAPITULATION. 



the height of the Alps, would run in a straight line 

 due southward ; and on its western flank, every 

 deep creek of the sea, or fiord, would end in "bold 

 and astonishing glaciers." These lonely channels 

 would frequently reverberate with the falls of ice, 

 and so often would great waves rush along their 

 coasts ; numerous icebergs, some as tall as cathe- 

 drals, and occasionally loaded with no " inconsid- 

 erable blocks of rock," would be stranded on the 

 outlying islets ; at intervals violent earthquakes 

 would shoot prodigious masses of ice into the wa- 

 ters 'below. Lastly, some missionaries, attempting 

 to penetrate a long arm of the sea, would behold 

 the not lofty surrounding mountains sending down 

 their many grand icy streams to the seacoast, and 

 their progress in the boats would be checked by 

 the innumerable floating icebergs, some small and 

 some great ; and this would have occurred on our 

 twenty-second of June, and where the Lake of 

 Geneva is now spread out !* 



■* In the former edition and Appendix, I have given some facts 

 on the transportal of erratic boulders and icebergs in the Antarc- 

 tic Ocean. This subject has lately been treated excellently by 

 Mr. Hayes, in the Boston Journal (vol. iv., p. 426). The author 

 does not appear aware of a case published by me (Geographical 

 Journal, vol. ix., p. 528), of a gigantic boulder embedded in an ice- 

 berg in the Antarctic Ocean, almost certainly one hundred miles 

 distant from any land, and perhaps much more distant. In the 

 Appendix I have discussed at length the probability (at that time 

 hardly thought of) of icebergs, when stranded, grooving and pol- 

 ishing rocks, like glaciers. This is now a very commonly re- 

 ceived opinion ; and I cannot, still, avoid the suspicion that it is 

 applicable even to such cases as that of the Jura. Dr. Richardson 

 has assured me that the icebergs of North America push before 

 them pebbles and sand, and leave the submarine rocky flats quite 

 bare : it is hardly possible to doubt that such ledges must be pol- 

 ished and scored in the direction of the set of the prevailing cur- 

 rents. Since writing that Appendix, I have seen in North Wales 

 (London Phil. Mag., vol. xxi., p. 180) the adjoining action of gla- 

 ciers and of floating icebergs. 



