266 GREENLAND 



that the greatest animal depends for its existence on a 

 being so minute that it takes thousands to be massed 

 together before they are visible to the naked eye." 



Cold as Greenland is, there was a time when matters 

 were different. In token of this we have the Miocene 

 fossils collected by Edward Whymper during his 

 expedition from near Jakobshavn in 1867, which were 

 described and illustrated by Oswald Heer in the Philo- 

 sophical Transactions for 1869. A look at these is a 

 welcome relief after such a surfeit of ice. Here, as 

 well preserved as in the leaf beds of Alum Bay, are 

 the leaves and fruits of an unmistakable temperate flora. 

 Magnolias, maples, poplars, limes, walnuts, water-lilies; 

 myrica, smilax, aralia ; sedges and grasses, conifers and 

 ferns : these at the least were all growing in Greenland 

 in its Miocene age. And even a thousand years ago 

 the climate must have been milder than now, to judge 

 by the farming reports of the colonists who seem to 

 have been quite at home along the coast, which, with 

 its innumerable islands and fiords, is as intricate as that 

 of Norway. 



Searching for the ancient eastern settlement of the 

 Norsemen, W. A. Graah, in 1829, wintered at 

 Julianehaab, which in all likelihood is the site, although 

 he knew it not. Possessed with the idea that it must 

 be on the south-eastern coast, he devoted his attention 

 to that region only, finding Eskimos who had never 

 seen a white man and starting a trading intercourse 

 which led to most of them migrating to the less incle- 

 ment west. His work linked up with that of Scoresby, 

 who in 1822 charted the main features of the sea-front 

 from 69 to 75. Ryder, seventy years afterwards, filled 



