CHAP. XXXIX 
THE PLA TEA U OF THE FAROE ISLES 
257 
promontory of Boclii. It extends in Kuno for at least six geographical 
miles. 
These vast escarpments of naked rock show, with even greater clearness 
than the precipices of the Inner Hebrides, how frequently the basalts die 
out, now in one direction now in 
another. The two sides of the 
Kalsdfjord exhibit many examples 
of this structure, and some striking- 
instances of it are to be seen on the 
west side of Haraldsfjord. In these 
cliffs, which must be about 2000 
feet high, upwards of forty distinct 
flows can sometimes be traced 
from the sea-level to the crest, 
thus somewhat less than 50 
Fig. 288. — Dying out of Lava-beds, east side of 
Sandd, Faroe Isles. 
The average thickness of each bed 
is tnus somewnar ress man ou feet. Such vast escarpments, with wide 
semicircular conies scooped out of their sides, such serrated crests and dark 
rifts in the precipices, such deep fjords winding through nearly horizontal 
basalts, of which the parallel sheets can be followed by the eye from island 
to island, fill the mind with a vivid conception at once of the enormous 
scale of the volcanic eruptions and of the stupendous denudation which 
this portion of North-Western Europe has undergone since Tertiary time. 
As the lenticular character of the basalts, and the evidence they supply 
of having been discharged from many small local vents are of great import- 
ance in the comprehension of the volcanic history of the plateaux, some 
further illustrations of these features may with advantage be given here. 
Thus the traveller who skirts the western precipices of Sudero will notice 
some good examples to the north of the highest part of the cliffs. On 
Stromb he will detect other cases of the same structure. Similar features 
will arrest his attention on the precipices of Sandb, where, though at first 
sight the basalts seem to be regular and continuous, a nearer view of them 
reveals such sections as that shown in Eig. 288, where a group of sheets 
rapidly dies out towards the north against a thicker band that thins away 
in the opposite direction. Further north he will come upon other examples 
in the range of low cliffs between 
Kirkebonaes and Thorshaven, and 
more impressive still in the rugged 
precipices that front the Atlantic 
on the western front of Hestb (Fig. 
289), where the disappearance is in 
a northerly direction. 
But it is in the northern part 
of the Faroes, where the basalt- 
plateau has been so deeply trenched by parallel fjords as to be broken 
up into a group of long, narrow, lofty, and precipitous insular ridges, that 
the really local and non - persistent character ol the lavas can best be 
seen. The eastern cliffs of Svino present admirable examples, where in the 
Fig. 289.' 
-Lenticular lavas, western front ol’ Hesto, 
Faroe Isles. 
VOL. II 
