And if the sea-bottom outside were upheaved, and became dry
land, we should find on it the remains of the mud from under the
glacier, stuck full of stones and boulders iceberg-dropped. This mud
would be often very irregularly bedded; for it would have been
disturbed by the ploughing of the icebergs, and mixed here and there
with dirt which had fallen from them. Moreover, as the sea became
shallower and the mud-beds got awash one after the other, they would
be torn about, re-sifted, and re-shaped by currents and by tides, and
mixed with shore-sand ground out of shingle-beach, thus making
confusion worse confounded. A few shells, of an Arctic or northern
type, would be found in it here and there. Some would have lived
near those later beaches, some in deeper water in the ancient ooze,
wherever the iceberg had left it in peace long enough for sea-animals
to colonise and breed in it. But the general appearance of the dried
sea-bottom would be a dreary and lifeless waste of sands, gravels,
loose boulders, and boulder-bearing clays; and wherever a boss of
bare rock still stood up, it would be found ground down, and probably
polished and scored by the ponderous icebergs which had lumbered over
it in their passage out to sea.
In a word, it would look exactly as vast tracts of the English,
Scotch, and Irish lowlands must have looked before returning
vegetation coated their dreary sands and clays with a layer of brown
vegetable soil.
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