The 'Norwegian CanaT 17 



wisli to see," writes Mr. James Geikie, "is that which the 

 fjords and valleys of Norway present. The smoothed 

 and niammillated mountain-tops, the rounded islets that 

 peer above the level of the sea like great whales, the 

 glistening and highly-polished surfaces of the rocks 

 that sweep right down into deep water, the great perched 

 blocks ranged like sentinels on jutting points and ledges, 

 the hufre mounds of moraine cUhris at the heads of the 

 valleys, and the wild disorder of crags and boulders 

 scattered over the former paths of glaciers combine to 

 make-a picture which no after amount of sight-seeing is 

 likely to cause a geologist to forget." 



The action of the rivers of ice, as we may call them, 

 which hollowed out the valleys and the fjord-beds did 

 not always follow the bend of the surface of the soil. 

 We can understand how the great pressure of the ice 

 sheet may have forced the ice lying on the surface to pass 

 over elevations and across small valleys. Thus we find 

 that many of the rock-scoriations travel across moderate 

 valleys and go up and down hill. On the same prin- 

 ciple it is believed that, beside the ice-rivers which ran 

 down the chief valleys, there was a lower ice-stream 

 which took a direction at right angles to their direction, 

 and that it was due to the action of this lower river of 

 ice — lying at the edge of and outside the streams which 

 were workino; down the vallevs — that we have the ex- 

 traordinary phenomenon of a deep channel running all 

 along a great part of the Norwegian coast and following 

 the line of that coast. 



This submarine channel is called the Norwegian canal. 

 The canal spreads all round the south-west ledge of 

 Norway, and travels far up its western coast. It begins 



B 



