GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS 



bigger. The snow will be pressed into ice, the whole thing begins slowly to 

 slip and float down a mountain-side, and there one has a glacier. 



If one travels northward one comes to neighbourhoods which are nearer to 

 the state of the Ice Period than are the districts in South Greenland. First 

 one will see Disko Island, which, with its large lava plateaux carrying on their 

 heights a flat glacier cap, reminds one very much of the inner regions of 

 Iceland. To the north lies the peninsula Niigssuaq, where in many places one 

 might well believe oneself removed to the Alps, as innumerable long, narrow 

 valley-glaciers shoot down from a height of nearly 2,000 metres towards some 

 large plains in the interior of the peninsula. Finally there is the Bay of 

 Umanaq, which is a slice of Spitzbergen magnified and beautified. 



The journey from Godthaab to this point has already been a long one — as 

 far as from Copenhagen to Switzerland — and a large edition of all Europe's 

 glacier-world has passed in review before the traveller; and still they were all 

 merely local glaciers independent of the inland-ice, which we have not yet 

 seen. First in the most northerly of the Danish districts, Upernivik, one gets 

 from the outer coast the right impression of it. 



Once it was all merely a snowdrift which did not melt during a cold 

 summer ; then it was a small glacier which lay hidden in a valley — a glacier 

 which grew, spread out, and filled the valley, merged into other glaciers, 

 reached the ocean, and put great icebergs into the water. And the glacier 

 increased constantly ; the low land was quite hidden, as were also the low 

 mountains. The ice grew up round the highest summits of the mountains, 

 the lee Period had set in, all land had disappeared, and the perfectly even 

 surface of the ice did not show a trace of the mountains and the valleys which 

 it covered. 



Thus the Ice Period arose, and the journey from Upernivik to Melville Bay 

 represents the last chapters of this history. The land in front of the ice 

 becomes increasingly narrow ; every valley is filled with ice. Large glaciers 

 shoot out between and across islands and skerries ; near the Devil's Thumb the 

 coast consists as much of ice as of land, and north of this point only occasional 

 small islands or nunataks push up. For miles the coast is one continuous wall 

 of ice. 



If one travels by sledge one may find that the ocean-ice by Cape York is 

 broken ; one must then travel for about 100 kilometres across the inland-ice 

 before one reaches Thule. 



Only the man who has travelled for weeks day after day along the inland- 

 ice without seeing land can rightly appreciate the nature of the Ice Period. 

 The first thing which impresses one is the enormous dimensions with which one 

 must reckon. The landscapes, which with their big fjords and huge moun- 

 tains seemed so large from the sea, now lie far beneath the spectator as narrow 

 rims of land, quickly disappearing to give room for a perfectly even snow- 

 plain. A journey across this from north to south would be as long as from 

 Copenhagen to the Sahara, and during this journey the landscape would not 

 alter for a single instant. Nowhere would one see land ; infinite as the sea lies 

 this snow-field, and life is represented neither by animal nor plant. Even the 

 Sahara has its oases between which men and animals move about ; but here 

 is nothing but snow — this is the region on earth most inimical to life. 



In the central parts of Greenland it never rains, as the temperature there 

 is permanently below minus 20° C, but it is not yet quite clear in which 

 seasons the snow falls here. All information points to the probability that 



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