THE ISLAND OF GREENLAND 25 



After a hot climb up the steep slopes that border 

 the sea it is a welcome change to lie on the heath 

 enjoying the cool breeze, the wonderful panorama 

 of mountain, sea, and ice and to revel in the peace- 

 ful solitude. 



From the granitic headlands of Cape Farewell, 

 on the latitude of the southern extremity of the 

 Shetland Islands, Greenland extends slightly be- 

 yond lat. 83 N.; it is nearly 1700 miles long, a 

 distance equal to that from the northern limit of 

 the Shetland Islands to the north coast of Africa, 

 and has an average breadth of about 600 miles, 

 an area approximately four times that of France. 

 On the north-west Greenland is separated from 

 Grant Land, Grinnell Land, and Ellesmere Land 

 by the narrow channels connecting Baffin Bay 

 with the Polar Sea; so narrow are the channels 

 that Eskimoes can easily pass across. It was doubt- 

 less by this route that the ancestors of the present 

 Greenlanders reached the country. With Europe 

 Greenland is closely connected geologically. In 

 the remote past, at least, there was probably a vast 

 continent, a northern Atlantis, stretching from 

 what are now the highlands of Norway and Scot- 

 land to the Arctic regions of America. Greenland 

 is in a geological as also in a biological sense a 

 connecting link between the Old and the New 

 World. By far the greater part of the island, so 

 far as it is possible to ascertain the structure of a 

 land almost completely covered by ice, consists of 

 coarsely crystalline rocks mainly of igneous origin 

 and of an antiquity that is inconceivably remote. 



