RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 347 



sea tangle spread out their long, streamer-like fronds to the 

 tide, the strong Cyprina and many-ribbed Astarte shelter by 

 scores amid the reticulations of the short woody stems and 

 thick-set roots. A sudden darkness comes on, like that which 

 fell upon Sinbad when the gigantic roc descended upon him ; 

 the sea-surface is fully sixty fathoms over head ; but even at 

 this great depth an enormous iceberg grates heavily against 

 the bottom, crushing into fragments in its course, Cyprina, 

 Modiola, Astarte, with many a hapless mollusc besides ; and 

 furrows into deep grooves the very rocks on which they lie. 

 It passes away ; and, after many an unsummed year has also 

 passed, there comes another change. The period of depres- 

 sion and of the boulder-clay is over. The water has shal- 

 lowed as the sea-line gradually sank, or the land was pro- 

 pelled upwards by some elevatory process from below ; and 

 each time the tide fells, the huge boulder now raises over 

 the waters its broad forehead, already hung round with flow- 

 ing tresses of brown sea-weed, and looks at the adjacent coast 

 The country has strangely altered its features : it exists no 

 longer as a broken archipelago, scantily covered by a -semi- ^ 

 arctic vegetation, but as a continuous land, still whitened, 

 where the great valleys open to the sea, by the pale gleam 

 of local glaciers, and snow-streaked on its loftier hill-tops. 

 But vast forests of dark pine sweep along its hill-sides or sel- 

 vage its shores ; and the sheltered hollows are enlivened by 

 the lighter green of the oak, the ash, and the elm. Human 

 foot has not yet imprinted its sward ; but its brute inhabi- 

 tants have become numerous. The cream-coloured coat of 

 the wild bull, a speck of white relieved against a ground of 

 dingy green, may be seen far amid the pines, and the long 

 howl of the wolf heard from the nearer thickets. The gi- 

 gantic elk raises himself from his lair, and tosses his ponder- 

 ous horns at the sound ; while the beaver, in some seques- 

 tered dell traversed by a streamlet, plunges alarmed into his 



