150 



THE OPAL SEA 



Fiords. 



Victor 

 Hugo' a 

 Lysefiord. 



of various shores called fiords. They exist only 

 along mountainous coasts as in Norway and 

 Alaska, and are supposed to be caused by a 

 subsidence of the land, which has allowed the 

 sea to enter the valleys and creep up the flanks 

 of the mountains. But no doubt the water is 

 responsible for much modification of the orig- 

 inal subsidence. Once the sea gains a grinding 

 space it is not easily persuaded to cease work. 

 The long fiords that run for many miles back 

 into the rock are not stagnant. The tide floods 

 them slowly because it has a push up hill; but 

 the ebb is more destructive and carries with it 

 seaward much loose debris. The tendency is 

 always to widen and deepen the runway of the 

 water. 



Possibly the best example of the fiord is not 

 the smaller indentation that marks the coast of 

 Maine and Nova Scotia; but Victor Hugo's 

 Lysefiord, which runs inland some twenty miles, 

 and yet in places is not more than two thou- 

 sand feet in width. Its walls are abrupt, being 

 based below the water line a thousand feet and 

 rising above the water line over three thousand 

 feet. It is apparently a cleft in the rock, so 

 narrow that the sunlight never touches parts 

 of it, winds rarely reach down to it, and heat 

 and cold are comparatively without effect upon 



