156 FORESTRY OF NORWAY. 
though far from picturesque. They present to an exces- 
sive degree the forms of roches moutonnées—the bare grass- 
less surfaces, dome-like, or undulating in tedious monotony, 
so characteristic of glacial action, with the usual accom- 
paniments of flutings and polished channels. The materia] 
of the rocks renders these impressions of external friction 
still more striking, for it is chiefly a coarse conglomerate, 
of which every part, the boulders as well as the cement 
is cut as by the lapidary’s wheel. The wonderful extent 
over which these appearances occur, and the unsparing 
severity with which the natural inequalities of the most 
obdurate rocks have been smoothed down, is strikingly 
impressive, when we couple it with the fact that if glaciers 
really were once much wider spread than at present, this 
vast chasm was the natural outlet of an icy flood, drawn 
from a more extensive origin than any other existing in 
the north of Europe.’ 
There may seem to be here an account of the general 
appearance presented by the fiord at its mouth differing 
from that given by the more graphic pen of Du Chaillu. 
I look upon the latter as probably the more valuable as an 
account of its picturesque effects; that of Forbes as more 
valuable as testimony of a scientific student of distin- 
guished attainments, giving his special attention as he had 
been doing long, to the indications of glacial action. On 
this point both are agreed, and Forbes speaks only of the 
mouth of the fiord, Du Chaillu takes us into its recesses, 
By some of the geologists whom I have cited it is held 
that in what is known as the glacial period Scotland must 
have been covered with one wide-spread sheet of ice and 
snow of great thickness, as at the present day is Northern 
Greenland, where there may be seen an interminable glacier 
extending league upon league, broken only by some black 
hill top or mountain peak that rises as an island above the 
sea of ice. But there this vast sheet is ever, even while 
being replenished by fresh falls of snow, slowly and 
persistently flowing, or rather creeping, down to the sea, 
