CHAPTER IV 



THE WINDS FROM THE "gREAT ICE" 



I HE aspect of Greenland as 

 one approaches it from the 

 sea, and especially from the 

 southwest, affords little no- 

 tion of its real character. The 

 coast is high and rocky — the 

 front of a modified plateau — 

 and this is deeply intrenched by a system of steep- 

 walled fjords, easily the greatest of its kind in 

 the world. Over wide stretches the front wall of 

 rock is flanked by a narrow belt of low islands, 

 at most a few hundred feet in height, and the 

 entire western coast is skirted by thousands of 

 rocky islets or skerries and half submerged reefs. 

 Behind this ribbon of coast-land, and generally 

 hidden from the sea, is found the Greenland of 

 the interior, a vast flattened dome of ice and snow 



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