of Edinburgh, Session 1865 - 66 . 535 
content myself with offering to the Society an account of two 
excursions to some distance from the ordinary route. 
A little to the north of the Arctic Circle lies the island of Melo, 
one of many which are here crowded together along the coast. It 
is only noticeable, inasmuch as it is a station at which the steamers 
call, and from which the great snow-fields of the Svartisen or Fon- 
dalen may be most easily visited. Here, as along all the rest of the 
Norwegian coasts, we find ourselves among bare bossy hummocks 
of rock thoroughly ice- worn. From the higher eminences the eye 
sweeps over the countless islets and skerries, and far across the 
Vest Fjord to the serrated peaks of the Lofodden Islands, which 
from the distance seem deep sunk in the north-western sea. The 
whole of the lower grounds is one labyrinth of roches moutonnees, 
raising their smooth backs like so many porpoises out of the sea, 
and out of a flat expanse of green pasture and dark bog which here 
covers an old sea-bottom. The striations and groovings are still 
fresh on many of the smoothed surfaces of gneiss, and invariably 
run straight out to sea in the line of the long valley up which the 
sea winds inland among the snowy mountains. It cannot be 
doubted that a vast mass of ice has come seawards down this valley, 
and that all these ice-worn hummocks of rock were ground down 
by it. The wide valley or opening which stretches inland from 
Meld, is formed by the converging mouths of a number of narrow 
fjords. Of these the most northerly is the Grlommens Fjord, 
which is bounded along its northern side by a range of high moun- 
tains, with a serrated crest and abundant snowy clefts and corries. 
Southward lies a belt of lower ice-worn hills, cut lengthwise by the 
Bjerangs Fjord, and bounded on the south by the Holands Fjord, 
on the south side of which rises another range of scarped snow- 
covered mountains.* 
From the gaard of Melo we boated eastwards among various small 
islets and channels, passing soon into the Holands Fjord, up which 
we continued until we rested underneath the great snow-field and 
* Although I use the word mountains, there is no definite system of ridges ; 
on the contrary, these fjords must be regarded as indentations along the edge 
of a great table-land, of which the average level may range from 3000 to 4000 
feet above the sea, and which serves as the platform on which the wide snow- 
fields lie. See “ Norway and its Glaciers,” pp. 190, 232. 
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