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These glacier tracts show that this later glacial
period was not a merely temporary condition that
existed only while the great ice sheet was thawing,
but that it must have endured for ages with little
variation, and formed an epoch of itself; for a
great deal of work has been done in shaping their
channels, not by great glaciers continually
becoming smaller, but by comparatively small glaciers
of long duration and little variation of dimensions.
This evidence is important, as it bears upon a
critical period of the world’s history, about the
time of man’s first appearance upon the scene.
These little glaciers performed a leading part in
the work of preparing this part of the world for
man’s reception. Without their agency little or
no agriculture would here be possible. Beyond
the trees that strike their roots into rock crevices
and thrive on the ledges of the steep hill-sides;
the saxifrage, with its grape-like bunches of hardy
flowers drooping over the precipices; the
scurvy-grass, the winter green, and their companion Alpine
plants, there could otherwise have been no
vegetation here. The mainland would be as barren as
the smaller Lofoden and other rocky islands of the
neighbourhood, where there was insufficient area
of hills to supply materials for such glaciers, and
where, at the present time, the inhabitants reap
no land harvest, but rely entirely upon that of the
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