The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

52 SCANDINAVIA.separation between the areas of upheaval and subsidence passes probably to thenorth of the present political frontier, across the broadest part of the peninsula.South of this line the coast lands have been changed to islands, whereas farthernorth former islands now form part of the mainland. Such are the small peninsulasprojecting seawards from Aarhus, north of which Lake Kolinsund, by itsvery name, recalls the time when it was, if not a strait,at least an inlet of the sea.In the neighbourhood are many hamlets whose names end in the syllable 6 (" isle "),also suggesting their former insular condition. Parts of the north coast endabruptly in a sort of bluff 14 to 26 feet high, along which are traced the horizontallines of different layers of peat, much firmer and blacker than ordinary turf, andcovered with marine sands These beds, which are very old, are supposed tobelong to a formation bodily upheaved from the sea. But immediately south ofthe point where begins the narrow stem of the peninsula we find traces of totallydifferent geological phenomena. Submarine alder, birch, and oak forests, togetherwith layers of peat, which formerly grew in fresh-water swamps, are now foundembedded in the deep muddy banks flooded by the sea. While dredging thechannels to render them navigable, the apparatus sometimes meets with treesburied beneath the waters.Like those of France, the Danish " landes " slope seaward very gradually,so that depths of 100 feet and upwards are not usually met with nearer than3G miles off the coast. Thus there are no harbours accessible to large vessels alongthe whole western seaboard of the Jylland peninsula, which crosses three degreesof latitude. Hence these waters, and especially the terrible Jammer Bay, areavoided by the shipping, which finds a safe ingress to the Baltic through thebroad, deep, and partly sheltered channel of the Skager Eak.The Danish Islands.Amongst the Baltic islands that of Fyen (Fiinen) might be regarded as belonginggeologically to Jylland, although now separated from it by the Little Belt,which is nowhere less than 710 yards wide. Fyen was at one time undoubtedlyattached to the mainland. It is composed of the same alluvium, and itsbeech-clad hills rise to about the same height as those of Jylland. They commandthe same smiling prospect of well-watered pastures, fields, and groves, and theyalso are intermingled with numerous erratic boulders, one of which, the HesselagerStone, is 100 feet in circumference, and rises 20 feet above the ground.East of the Great Belt the now scattered islands of Sjalland (Zealand), Moen,Falster, and Laaland are also nothing but one land broken up by narrow troughsof recent geological origin. The rocks of Moen and of a large part of Sjallandbelong to the chalk epochs ;but north and south of this cretaceous zone therestretch later formations, strewn with the detritus brought hither by floating ice.These formations occupy, on the one hand, the northern portion of Sjalland, and onthe other the islands of Falster and Laaland. In this geological group the culminatingpoint lies in the little island of Moen, where the Aborrebjerg rises amidst