126 SEA AND LAND 



ing- birth to its young-. By this savage description they seem 

 to indicate, in the manner common to primitive peoples, tlieir 

 sense of the activity which exists in the ghicial streams, as well 

 as tliat perception of life in nature which, though a common 

 feature with uncivilized people, disappears with the advance 

 in culture. 



(ireenland is the o;reat source whence the icebcros of the 

 North Atlantic are " calved," and the physical conditions of 

 the country make it admirably fitted to be the breeding-place 

 for those monsters of the deep. Until very recently our 

 knowledge of this country was limited to the southern ex- 

 tremity of the island and the narrow strip along the western 

 shore, where there are a few villages which are visible from a 

 ship's deck. The eastern shore is so blocked by floe-ice that 

 few mariners have seen the mainland for more than a hundred 

 miles beyond its southernmost part. It has long been knowm, 

 however, that along the whole coast-line the glaciers descend 

 to the heads of the inlets or fiords which plentifully intersect 

 the shore. Both on the east and the west the ice-streams are 

 so deep and massive that they override the whole marginal 

 portion of the countr)-, hiding its irregularities in the vast 

 sheet of the glacier, which sweeps into the sea until it attains 

 a depth where the ice breaks off and iloats away in the form 

 of icebergs. The greatest of these ice-fronts, that of the 

 Humboldt Glacier, faces the water in the upper part of 

 Baffin's Bay with a continuous precipice of ice having a 

 length of about fifty miles. So far as is yet known, this is 

 the larg(;st of the Greenland berg factories, but it is possible 

 that even greater protrusions of the central glacial field may 

 occur on the eastern coast. 



There has long been much natural curiosity concerning the 



