32 A SUMMER IN GREENLAND 



Artocarpus, which is now exclusively an Old World 

 genus, are recorded also from North American 

 rocks. 



Seen from the sea, the coast of Greenland forms 

 a long line of mountains often reaching a height 

 of 30004000 ft.; the darker blue of the nearer 

 hills shading gradually up the deep and tortuous 

 fjords into the lighter tones of those farther inland. 

 Off many parts of the coast lie scattered groups 

 of islands, or skerries, like huge round-backed 

 whales, the ice-worn summits of a submerged 

 mountain-range. 



Over the whole of the interior is the ' dead storm- 

 lashed desert of ice' rising in the central regions 

 to a height of 8000-10,000 ft., its surface thrown 

 into gentle undulations and the monotony occa- 

 sionally broken by a stream that plunges with a 

 roar into a chasm of unknown depth. Fridtjof 

 Nansen, who in 1888 was the first to cross Green- 

 land, compared the inland ice to the gently sloping 

 surface of a shield many hundreds or even thou- 

 sands of feet in thickness. As the sloping sides of 

 the ice-shield approach the edge of the plateau 

 crevasses are of frequent occurrence, and here and 

 there a few of the higher peaks of the buried high- 

 lands, with groups of the more hardy Arctic plants 

 adhering to their rocks, stand as lonely sentinels 

 on a limitless field of snow and ice. From the 

 inland ice glaciers, like huge tentacles, are thrust 

 outwards towards the sea, far surpassing in the 

 rate of movement the glaciers of the Alps, and as 

 the ice reaches water deep enough to buoy up the 



