52 SCANDINAVIA. 



separation between the areas of upheaval and subsidence passes probably to the 

 north of the present political frontier, across the broadest part of the peninsida. 

 South of this line the coast lands have been changed to islands, whereas farther 

 north former islands now form part of the mainland. Such are the small penin- 

 sulas j)rojecting seawards from Aarhus, north of which Lake Kolinsund, by its 

 very name, recalls the time when it was, if not a strait, at least an inlet of the sea. 

 In the neighbourhood are many hamlets whose names end in the syllable o (" isle "), 

 also suggesting their former insular condition. Parts of the north coast end 

 abruptly in a sort of bluff 14 to 26 feet high, along which are traced the horizontal 

 lines of different layers of peat, much firmer and blacker than ordinary turf, and 

 covered with marine sands These beds, which are very old, are supposed to 

 belong to a formation bodily upheaved from the sea. But immediately south of 

 the point where begins the narrow stem of the peninsula we find traces of totally 

 different geological phenomena. Submarine alder, birch, and oak forests, together 

 with layers of peat, w^hich formerly grew in fresh-water swamps, are now found 

 embedded in the deep muddy banks flooded by the sea. While dredging the 

 channels to render them navigable, the apparatus sometimes meets with trees 

 buried beneath the waters. 



Like those of France, the Danish "landes" slope seaward very gradually, 

 so that depths of 100 feet and upwards are not usually met with nearer than 

 36 miles off the coast. Thus there are no harbours accessible to large vessels along 

 the whole western seaboard of the Jylland peninsula, which crosses three degrees 

 of latitude. Hence these waters, and especially the terrible Jammer Bay, are 

 avoided by the shipping, which finds a safe ingress to the Baltic through the 

 broad, deep, and partly sheltered channel of the Skager Rak. 



The Danish Islands. 



Amongst the Baltic islands that of Fyen (Fiinen) might be regarded as belong- 

 ing geologically to Jylland, although now separated from it by the Little Belt, 

 which is nowhere less than 710 yards wide. Fyen was at one time undoubt- 

 edly attached to the mainland. It is composed of the same alluvium, and its 

 beech-clad hills rise to about the same height as those of Jylland. They command 

 the same smiling prospect of well- watered pastures, fields, and groves, and they 

 also are intermingled with numerous erratic boulders, one of which, the Hesse- 

 lager Stone, is 100 feet in circumference, and rises 20 feet above the ground. 



East of the Great Belt the now scattered islands of Sjiilland (Zealand), Moen, 

 Falster, and Laaland are also nothing but one land broken up by narrow troughs 

 of recent geological origin. The rocks of Moen and of a large part of Sjalland 

 belong to the chalk epochs ; but north and south of this cretaceous zone there 

 stretch later formations, strewn with the detritus brought hither by floating ice. 

 These formations occupy, on the one hand, the northern portion of Sjalland, and on 

 the other the islands of Falster and Laaland. In this geological group the culmi- 

 nating point lies in the little island of Moen, where the Aborrebjerg rises amidst 



