Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/303

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The streams were still running and the terraced weathering of the rocks was well shown. Towards the ocean a range of high peaks was seen, which formed the southern boundary of another fiord, twinned with the one we were in. and far back beyond the head of the fiord rose immense backs of mountains, spotted with snow. We passed again out to sea upon a rolling swell, into splendid clear water, and skirted the superb front of receding basaltic steps, each one of which was a separate flow, and where as many stages as twenty or forty were counted in their structure, showing bold stepped profiles.

At the summits of these amazing walls, erosion and weathering seemed to have worked with greater activity, forming deep alcoves, sweeping recesses, and then cirques were seen between the lofty divisional massifs. Water-ways or shallow fiords divided this remarkable face of rock into component fractions, and as the last one appeared—sentinel to the beautiful Seydisfiord—green slopes encircled its formidable precipices holding lonely farm>, and a s])outing waterfall sprang outward from its riven side. We were at Seydisfiord.

The village of Seydisfiord was perhaps the first which breathed a