537 
of Edinburgh, Session 1865 - 66 . 
height of fully 1500 feet. A tract of bare hills, lying between the 
Grlommens and the Holands Fjord, and rising eastward into the 
snow-covered table-land, is well smoothed in the direction of these 
fjords. In short, the whole of the broad depression between the 
two fjords has been filled with ice, moving steadily downwards 
from the snow-fields to the sea. 
It was interesting to watch, on every little islet and promontory 
under which we passed, the same details of glaciation so familiar 
along the margin of our Scottish fjords. The rocks are, as usual, 
smoothed into flowing lines, and slip sharply and cleanly into the 
water. They are well grooved and striated, these markings differ- 
ing in no respect from those in Britain. Moreover, it was easy to 
see that the ice which had graven these lines must have moved 
down the fjord, for the lee or rougher side of the crag looked sea- 
wards. It was likewise clear that the scorings were not the work of 
drifting bergs or coast ice, for they could often be seen mounting 
over projecting parts of the banks, yet retaining all the while their 
sharpness, parallelism, and persistent trend. Another point of 
similarity to west Highland scenery, was found in the strange 
scarcity or absence of drift and boulders. I do not mean to assert 
that these are not to be met with at all, but they do not exist so 
prominently as to catch the eye even of one who is on the outlook 
for them. The rock everywhere raises its bare knolls to the sun 
as it does on the coasts of Inverness and Argyll. 'To complete the 
resemblance, the Norwegian fjord has its sides marked by the line 
of a former sea-margin, about 250 feet above the present. This 
terrace winds out and in among all the ramifications and curves of 
the fjord, remaining fresher and more distinct than the raised 
beaches of the west Highlands usually are, and even rivalling one 
of the parallel roads of Lochaber. 
We rested for a week at the hamlet of Fondalen, on the south 
side of the Holands Fjord. It stands at the mouth of a deep narrow 
valley on the line of the terrace, which here runs along the crest of 
a steep bank of rubbish covered with enormous blocks of rock — an 
old moraine thrown across the end of the valley. There seems to 
have been at one time a lake behind this bank, formed by the 
ponding back of the drainage of the valley, and gradually emptied 
as the outflow-stream deepened its channel througli the moraine. 
