38 MAEIOX EXPEDITION TO DAVIS STEAIT AND BAFFIN BAY 



" storis '' near Goclthaab, west Greenland. Nansen drifted on the 

 pack in July, 1888, from near Angmagissalik, latitude 65° 35' N., 

 lono-itude 38° W. to 61° 35' N., 42° W.. near Cape Farewell at the 

 rate of 21: miles per day. (See Helland-Hansen-and Nansen, 1909, 

 p. 306.) Wreckage of the famous Jeanette after leaving the polar 

 basin must have drifted southward along Greenland because several 

 pieces have been recovered on the southwest coast. Siberian tree 

 trunks and many other unmistakable types of oriental driftwood 

 have l)een picked up along the shores of southern Greenland — addi- 

 tional evidence of the drift of the ice. 



Upon the approach of summer the east Greenland pack recedes 

 inversely as it advances. The southwest coast olt Julianehaab is 

 usually free from ice by early August; Cape Farewell in late August 

 or early September : and Angmagissalik during September.-^ 

 Scoresby Sound district is more likely to be free in late September 

 than at any other time, but in severe ice years it may not uncover 

 at all; or other parts of the east Greenland coast, for that matter. 

 During late summer or fall, when the east Greeland ice pack 

 shrinks to a minimum, open water may be found close in, or even 

 along the coast in favorable places. Angmagissalik, in latitude 66 

 north, on the other hand, has occasionally been isolated by ice the 

 entire year. The supply shij) usually finds communication easiest 

 during the months of September and October, but sometimes it has 

 not been able to land there until early November, while in one year, 

 Wandel (1893, p. 252) mentions that the coast around Angmagissalik 

 was free of ice from September 10 until November 25. It is inter- 

 esting to know that Angmagissalik Avas selected in 1891: as Denmark's 

 chief trading post in east Greenland because the ice belt at this point 

 is most penetrable. It is rare indeed for the pack ice to retreat 

 as far north as the Arctic Circle, but there are records of such 

 occurrences. 



The fact that Greenland is one of the earliest discovered lands, 

 affords opportunity to investigate possible changes that have slowly 

 developed in the character and behavior of the drift ice. The legend- 

 ary accounts of the early voyages of the Norsemen during the eleventh 

 century suggest that Greenhmd waters were icier then than they are 

 to-day. These adventurous colonizers apparently cruised directh' 

 from Iceland to Greenland in their open Viking ships and followed 

 the coast southward to C^aj^e Fai'ewell on courses to-day completeh^ 

 blockaded. The earliest reports, in the first century of the 

 young colom', mention good pasturage and large fine farms in 

 Greenland, but later, conditions apparently changed for the worse 

 and we learn about the advance of great masses of ice. Recent 

 archeological excavations in southwest Greenland -^ have disclosed 

 the root-entwined frozen bodies of some of these early settlers, evi- 

 dence of a record of a change of climate. In the thirteenth century 

 the slow advance of the pack is again corroborated by the southward 

 migration of the Eskimos; the chain of evidence being traceable in 

 the economic relation between the gradual encroachment of the pack 

 and the consequent disappearance of seals and of man. 



2* No pack ice whatsoever was sighted around Cape Farewell by the Marion expedition 

 cruising in that vicinity, September, 1928. 



"^ See Hovgaard (1925, p. 614). Porsild, in discussing the archeological finds, told me 

 that the roots were those of annuals, not perennials ; therefore tlie evidence is not 

 conclusive. 



