General observations as to natural conditions. 367 



and we were able to proceed along the border of Game Land, the snow 

 underfoot soon making excellent going. Between 37° and 38° W. the 

 ice sloped in towards the land, forming a lake which extended over to 

 the land itself. The extent of this lake was difficult to judge, as it was 

 partly frozen, and the boundary between lake ice and glacier ice imper- 

 ceptible. The outline given on the map is therefore somewhat uncertain. 

 Our course now lay westward again along the borders of Game Land, 

 the snow hard and firm underfoot, and the ice still rising in a fairly 

 steep slope. Following the line of the land, which turned sharply off to 

 the south, we came to a small bay, formed by a huge mound of moraine 

 deposit which ran up from the southward and joined the land. At the 

 base of this bay, on the inner side of the moraine, lay a small lake, and 

 here we camped. 



14th July (81°32' N., 38°30' W.). 



The southern and western portions of Game Land are throughout 

 of moraine formation, stony and barren. This last feature is of course 

 largely due to the fact that the country slopes gently upwards towards 

 the north, and is thus exposed without shelter to the continual south- 

 west wind and driving snow from the inland ice. 



The whole character of the country however shows that it has in 

 recent times been covered by the ice; stones and heaps of gravel lie 

 strewn about on every side, the solid rock in its original formation being 

 nowhere visible. Outside the border, along the whole of the south coast, 

 lie enormous masses of moraine deposit, clay gravel, and great rounded 

 boulders, deeply scored, indiscriminately mixed together, or at times 

 heaped up in narrow mounds. One of these I measured; the height 

 was 13 metres, thickness at foot being only about 20 metres or a little 

 over (measured at the end of the mound). 



These moraine masses have been observed here and described, by 

 Peary and Astrup, and are also mentioned by the latter in his work 

 „Blandt Nordpolens Naboer" ; they extend out at intervals all along the 

 south coast of Game Land and are also to be found, in horseshoe form, 

 south of the largest of Nansens Nunataks. The horseshoe formation was 

 perhaps the most common; S-shaped or merely straight mounds were 

 also found in numbers, as indicated on the map. In many cases one end 

 of the mound joined up to the mainland; the direction, however, did 

 not appear to indicate any definite system, varying between a line parallel 

 to the coast and one at right angles to the same. Outside the largest 

 of Holger Kiærs Nunataks also, we found a couple of these huge ridges 

 of moraine deposit. 



Peary's map shows, besides the two nunataks noted by us, also 

 two others, lying farther south, i. e. farther up in the inland ice. Peary 

 has charted them as low islands, almost flat, in the surrounding ice. 



These were now nowhere to be seen. The ice, however, at 

 the place where they were marked, and which we could easily see, was 



