Survey, of Northeast Greenland. 441 
moraine at Annekssøen rests on a fragile sediment, consisting of 
limestone and coal, which the ice has thus not been able to erode, 
and yet it has at the same time had sufficient strength to polish 
the near and somewhat more highly situated gneiss rocks immediately 
east of the sediments. 
Hvalsletten. Through observations of the heights of the strand 
lines above the sea, it has been possible to form a clear conception 
of the fact that Germania Land after the European-North-American 
Fig. 133. Wall of limestone with layers of coal; on the top moraine 
deposits. Near the margin of the inland ice at Annekssoen. May. 
period has risen about 400 m (see Fig. 70). This rise, which is the 
simple consequence of the melting of the ice, has however not kept 
pace with the melting itself, but in consequence of the inertness of 
the crust of the earth it has been greatly retarded. Great stretches 
of Germania Land have thus in the alluvial period been below the 
surface of the sea. The traces, left by the sea, are generally confined 
to more or less effaced strand lines and to the apperance of shells; 
as regard the landforms these traces of the sea are of no real im- 
portance. Only in a single locality, in the hollow between Moskus- 
oksefjældene and Sælsøen, does there appear a plain 20 km long and 
about 10 km broad, which has been formed below the sea by the 
melting off of the ground moraine from the floating inland ice, in 
the same manner in which to-day this melting off must take place 
in Jökelbugten. 
