Fiords. 449 



Though I have no doubt that many seaward ex- 

 tensions of land valleys, now fiords, were once dry land 

 valleys themselves, and that the deeper hollows in them 

 were sometimes excavated when the whole stood above- 

 the level of the sea, yet this is not essential, for as 

 has been observed by Mr. Amund Helland in his masterly 

 papers (already quoted) on the Grlaciation of Greenland, 

 Norway, and Sweden, if a great glacier be sufficiently 

 powerful to push onward, and grind for many miles 

 along the bottom of a long fiord, the scooping out of 

 rock-bound basins will be much the same as if its whole 

 length were above the level of the sea. 



I am not aware of any such fiords on the coast of 

 England, though it may very well be that in Wales the 

 Estuary of the Mawddach may be an old lake or rock- 

 bound fiord-basin now greatly silted up, for the 

 frequent roches moutonnees opposite Barmouth, once 

 islands, seems to indicate a rocky barrier there. 



When, however, we go into Scotland, where the 

 mountains are high and the valley ice-streams were 

 thick, there is no lack of them there. From Loch 

 Erriboll, with its ice-ground mountains and islets, fig. 

 94, to the Firth of Clyde there is not a fiord that is not 

 deeper in its further recesses than at its mouth, a fact 

 proved by the charts of the Admiralty. 1 It is needless 

 here to enter into minute details, but I may mention 

 that the small fiord of Loch Erriboll is 78 feet deep 

 near its upper end, and much shallower at its mouth. 

 Half way up, little Loch Broom has a depth of 342 

 feet, and at its mouth is nowhere deeper than from 60 to 



1 For a recent account of this subject see ' The Great Ice Age, 

 by James Geikie, LL.D., F.R.S., in which, on very clear maps, he 

 shows soundings both of inland fiords, and sea rock-basins near 

 the British coasts. 



G G 



