Survey of Northeast Greenland. 415 
where the contour of the surrounding country plays a great part 
both as regards the direction and the velocity of the wind. 
In Meteorologische Terminbeobachtungen am Danmarks Havn, 
Medd. om Grønl. XLI, pp. 341—345 WEGENER treats the subject of the 
natural law, according to which the snow is deposited. Roughly 
speaking the conditions are as follows: Wherever the wind blows 
out across a mountainous coast, the direction becomes a downward 
sloping one. When it meets the ice or the flat foreland, it is forced 
into a horizontal direction. In the place where the change of direction 
takes place, there is a condensation of the wind currents, which 
enables the air to convey larger quantities of drifting snow, than it 
Fig. 100. Wind-swept ice along the coast. The ice knoll is formed above a rock 
by the tide in a similar manner as the ice foot. 
contains beforehand. In this manner a wind-swept area is created 
along the coast. Only in calm weather can the snow be deposited 
in this place, but at the first drift it is carried out across the ice. 
Throughout the winter one often finds, in the wind-swept area a 
completely smooth belt of ice along the coast, which circumstance 
plays a great part, as far as the sledge journeys are concerned. 
The depositing of snow begins, as a rule, at some distance from 
the shore, and increases up to a certain limit in the direction of the 
wind. The above-mentioned extremely heavy ice north of Ile de 
France is, among other things, a proof that this limit may be far 
out. Nearly all of the mouths of the fjords in Northeast Greenland 
are typical examples of depositing areas; uncommonly large deposits 
of snow have been encountered off the mouth of Ardencaple Inlet, 
XLVI. 27 
