264 DR JAMES GEIKIE ON 
the valleys. But the influence of jointing upon denudation is certainly most 
marked in the sea-cliffs. Nowhere can this be seen to better advantage than 
along the magnificent shore-line of Stromde between Westmannshavnfiord and 
Myling. The cliffs there are nearly vertical, and show broad, bare, plane 
faces, that look often as if they had been only freshly fractured or sliced. 
Towards the top they are more rugged, and grass grows on all the little ledges, 
giving the appearance to the cliffs of having been sprinkled with green tufts. 
The upper parts of the cliffs are often riven by the frost into peaks, spikes, 
and spires. This great rock-wall, I may add, ranges in height from 1200 feet 
or so up to 2277 feet. Between Muulen and Saxen occur some splendid stacks 
called the “ Drangar” (isolated or lonely ones). Some of these are not less 
than 400 feet in height. They taper upwards to sharp pinnacles, and one of 
them, called “ Toskuradrangar,” which forms a long wall running parallel to 
the cliff, is pierced by a lofty portal. Long vertical master-joimts are con- 
spicuous in the cliffs at irregular intervals, and give rise to hollows and caves. 
All the caves we saw between Muulen and Saxen were worked out either 
along the lines of such joints or in vertical dykes of basalt. They occur in 
all stages. Here one sees the process just beginning,—a little cleft only a foot 
or two in width, and a few feet in height. There again one observes another 
which shows a somewhat greater breadth and height, the height almost in- 
variably exceeding the breadth. Sometimes as many as twenty caves can be 
counted in the space of a quarter of a mile or less, varying in extent from a 
few feet in height and breadth to large caverns 20 to 50 feet in height, and 
somewhat less in breadth, which penetrate the cliff for some considerable 
distance. The master-joints just referred to seem to cut the cliffs at right 
angles to their trend, and they are crossed by another set of great joints which 
have the same direction as the coast-line. Thus when the sea has undermined 
the cliff to a certain extent, the strata eventually give way and great segments 
are sliced off along the lines of jointing that run parallel to the shore. These 
joints are, of course, not so conspicuously visible as those which cut them at 
right angles. Nevertheless, they were seen again and again on the sides of 
projecting headlands, and the clean fracture presented by the faces of the cliffs 
themselves clearly indicate their presence. The large sea-stacks or “ drangar” 
seemed to me to owe their origin to the destruction of caves which had been 
hollowed out along both lines of jointing, the long wall-like sea-stack called 
“Toskuradrangar ” being evidently defined by joint-planes. This well-marked — 
cross jointing has also given rise to the remarkable indentation in the cliffs — 
which occurs a little south of the “drangar,” where the cliffs retire so as to 
form a kind of marine amphitheatre about 60 or 70 yards in diameter, and 
surrounded by nearly vertical precipices rising to some 1200 or 1400 feet. 
Similar joints are well seen along the coast of most of the other islands, 
