GREENLAND AND THE GREENLANDERS. 303 



larities, the ice-cap slopes like a shield uniformly toward the inte- 

 rior. Thus, in certain places the explorer should expect to meet 

 elevations of seven thousand or eight thousand feet ; but, owing 

 to an optical illusion, he scarcely knows whether he is climbing or 

 descending. The horizon seems to rise on all sides, says Nordensk- 

 jold, " as if he were at the bottom of a basin." 



The aspect of these boundless wastes rolling away in scarcely 

 perceptible undulations, and in the distance mingling the gray of 

 their snows with the gray of the skies, at first gave the impression 

 that Greenland was a uniform plateau, a sort of horizontal table. 

 The belief now prevails that the rocky surface of the land is, on 

 the contrary, carved into mountains and hills, valleys and gorges, 

 but that the plastic snows and ice have gradually filled up all the 

 cavities, which now show only in slight sinuosities on the surface. 

 Allowing to the whole mass of the ice-cap an average thickness 

 of five hundred feet, it would represent a total volume of about 

 one hundred and fifty thousand cubic miles. This sermer sudk, 

 or " great ice " of the Greenlanders, flows like asphalt or tar with 

 extreme slowness seaward, while the surface is gradually leveled 

 by the snow falling during the course of ages and distributed by 

 the winds. In the interior of the country the surface of the ice 

 and snow is as smooth as if it were polished, looking like " the 

 undisturbed surface of a frozen ocean, the long but not high bil- 

 lows of which rolling from east to west are not easily distinguish- 

 able to the eye." * Nevertheless, the exterior form of the ice-cap 

 has been greatly diversified, at least on its outer edge, where in 

 many places it is difficult to cross, or even quite impassable. The 

 action of lateral pressure, of heat produced by the tremendous 

 friction, of evaporation and filtration, has often broken the surface 

 into innumerable cones a few yards high, in form and color resem- 

 bling the tents of an encampment. The depressions of the snowy 

 plateau are filled with meres, lagoons, and lakes ; streams and riv- 

 ulets excavate winding gorges with crystal walls in the snow and 

 ice. Cascades, frozen at night, plunge during the day into pro- 

 found crevasses ; during the expedition of 1870 Nordenskjold saw 

 intermittent jets of water rising to a great height, which he was 

 unable to study, but which he supposes must be geysers. 



Most of the glaciers reaching the coast round the Greenland 

 seaboard present a somewhat regular frontal line, from which 

 blocks of varying size break off with every wave and drift away 

 with the current. But the frozen streams which yield those huge 

 masses large enough to be called icebergs, that is, " mountains of 

 ice," are relatively few in number, their production requiring a 

 combination of favorable circumstances, such as the thickness of 



* Nansen, Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, August, 1889. 



