THE CLOSING OF THE STATION 



is but little subject to fog, though sometimes 

 wrapped in smoke from forest fires. 



Since the immediate coast-land of Labrador is 

 for much of the time wrapped in fog, largely due 

 to the cold Labrador current which skirts it, and 

 the fleets of icebergs and ice-floes which are borne 

 along with it; were it necessary for an aviator to 

 wait at Melville Bay until the coast was clear of 

 fog, the time necessary to reach Europe might 

 easily be so long as to offer no advantages over 

 other means of transportation. Fortunately, the 

 great ice-cap of Greenland is apparently always 

 clear of fog, and its white expanse is so vast that 

 it could not be missed by an aviator, even if his 

 plane should be carried some hundred or more 

 miles off his course. Once past the Greenland 

 west coast, if he does not immediately come out of 

 the fog, the aviator will do so when he reaches 

 the border of the inland-ice; and the grand scale 

 of the tongues passing out from its margin, as well 

 as the deep and wide fjords which cut into the 

 land outside, should make it easy for him to find 

 his position upon the map. In his flight during the 

 sununer of 1928 Hassell flew in cloud the entire 

 span of Davis Strait and arrived on the Greenland 

 Coast 250 miles off his course to the southward. 

 None the less he was able to find his position upon 



361 



