I9I0.] INLAND-ICE OF THE ARCTIC REGIONS. 123 



fjord (lat. 62° N.) which was over 100 yards in diameter. The 

 kittiwakes swarmed over the spot, and the water was muddy, al- 

 though no brooks were observed along neighboring shores. This 

 w^ell Rink believed, from reports furnished by the natives, to be 

 much smaller than the similar ones in some other fjords. 



According to Rink"^ the lateral lake which borders the inland- 

 ice of Greenland in one of the branches of the Godthaabfjord-Kan- 

 gersunek, suffers changes of level just when the submarine wells 

 before the ice cliff in the fjord showed marked changes in volume. 

 Thus, whenever the water of the lake suddenly subsides, the sub- 

 marine wells from the bottom of the fjord burst out with violence. 

 On the other hand, when the water in the lake is rising, the wells 

 are relatively quiet. These sudden discharges of the water from 

 lateral lakes, save only that their outlet is submarine, seem to be in 

 every way analogous to the spasmodic discharges of the Marjelen 

 See upon the margin of the Great Aletsch Glacier in Switzerland. 

 When, as occasionally happens, this lake empties through the open- 

 ing of a passage beneath the glacier, the villages which are situated 

 miles below in the valley are suddenly inundated with water. 



Discharge of Bergs from the Ice Front. 

 The Ice Cliff at Fjord Heads. — Wherever the inland-ice reaches 

 the sea in the fjord heads, and where it comes directly to the sea in 

 broad fronts, as it does near Melville Bay, at Jokull Bay and on the 

 north side of northeast Foreland, it is here attacked directly by the 

 waves and is further undermined through melting in the water. 

 The crevassing of its surface over the generally steep descents to the 

 fjords, in a large measure facilitates the attack of the water upon 

 the ice by offering planes of weakness similar to the joint planes in 

 rock cliffs attacked by the sea on headlands. The fjords, though 

 often quite narrow, are generally of great depth, so that although the 

 ice cliff often rises to a height of several hundred feet, and in such 

 cases must be assumed to descend to a depth below the surface of 

 from five to seven times this distance, its base probably everywhere 

 rests upon the bottom of the fjord. To this a possible exception 



"'Rink, /. c. 



