APPEARANCES OF GLACIERS AND SNOW-FIELDS. 171 



explanation of phenomena, which abound in these northern 

 lands as elsewhere. 



Other travellers have supplied additional sketches 

 which help to fill up the outline. 



William's writing of his voyage to Plain merfest, in the 

 far north, says: 'Ab about four o'clock on the second 

 morning of our return journey we passed some remarkable 

 glaciers near to the Havnes station ; one of them very 

 nearly reached the sea. We were near enough to examine 

 them pretty fully, and with the aid of telescopes or opera 

 glasses to look down the blue crevasses which rib the lower 

 parts. They exhibit the whole phenomena of glaciers at 

 one glance ; there is the snow-field or neve above, the 

 source from which the true glacier is derived ; the deep 

 lateral valley narrowing downward, one of the essential 

 conditions of glacier formation ; then the ice torrent, with 

 its sharp billows and blue chasms, filling this valley, and 

 carrying with it in its slow descent blocks of rock forming 

 the moraine, which, when deposited at its boundaries, 

 will remain to mark its place, though the climate of the 

 whole region should change, and the ice and snow all melt 

 away/ 



That was in the far north. Writing of his visit to 

 the Romsdal in the south, he says: ' Veblungsnaesset is 

 the port of the Romsdal, which valley is the " lion" of all 

 Norway ; the Norwegians themselves travel long distances 

 to see it. In the Christiania Illustrated News there are 

 numerous wood-cuts of its finest scenic features, and every 

 Englishman who comes to Norway is told that he must see 

 it, and his expectations are raised to the highest.' The 

 descriptions given by him of the waterfalls are numerous, 

 varied, grand, and picturesque, and seem to show that ' the 

 Romsdal can safely bear this terrible ordeal of much re- 

 peated praise.' But what concerns us at present is the 

 following statement : ' In nearly all the tracks and hol- 

 lows of the dark precipitous rocks are patches of snow, 

 some of them so low as almost to touch the corn fields ; for 



