DISCOVERY^ 



269 



separated from Grant Land, Grinnell Land, and 

 Ellesmere Land by the narrow channels connecting 

 Baffin's Bay with the Polar Sea : so narrow are the 

 channels that Eskimo can easily pass across. It was 

 doubtless 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 Scotland to the 

 Arctic regions of .\merica. Greenland is in a geological 

 as also in a biological sense a connecting link between 

 the Old and New Worlds. 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. 

 The cliffs on some parts of the coast are built up of 

 limestones, sandstones, shales, and old pebble beaches 

 containing the remains of animals and plants charac- 

 teristic of several geological periods and clearly indi 

 eating climatic conditions within the .-Vrctic Circl. 

 much more genial than those at the present day. Even 

 in the extreme north, on the shore of the Polar Sea, 

 limestone rocks have been described by the Dani^h 

 geologist Koch as " veritable coral reefs " of the- 

 Palaeozoic era, the fourth era in geological time. 



Greenland is a mountainous plateau mainly com- 

 posed of some of the oldest rocks in the world belongini^ 

 to a stage in the history of the earth (the Archsan 

 period) which is shrouded in mystery. Of the life of 

 this period we have no certain knowledge. On the 

 extreme northern coast, also at many places on the 

 east and west coasts, the presence of thick series of 

 ancient sediments and of rocks consistitig of accumu- 

 lated masses of the calcareous skeletons of marine 

 animals is evidence of recurrent subsidences of the 

 land and the submergence of its edges. The occurrence 

 of terraces of sand and gravel at a height of from 

 200 to 300 feet above the present tide-level, containing 

 marine shells of species still living in the Arctic seas, 

 denotes an upward lift of the coast-line in compara- 

 tivelv recent times. A still more recent movement, 

 but in a downward direction, is demonstrated by a 

 comparison of a series of photographs, taken over a 

 period of several years by a Danish geologist, which 

 shows that the tangled mass of brown seaweed which 

 clings to the foot of the cliffs at low water is slowly 

 creeping upwards. The fact that iron rings for ships' 

 cables fastened into the rocks on the west coast are 

 exposed only at low tide is confirmatory evidence 

 that, on the west coast at least, Greenland is sinking. 



Seen from the sea the coast of Greenland forms a 

 long line of mountains often reaching a height of 

 from 3,000 to 4,003 feet, 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 8, god to 10, odd feat, its surface thrown into 

 gentle undulations and the monotony occasionally 

 broken by a stream that plunger; with a roar into a 



I IG. I — .\ DYKE OF B.\S.\I,T PORMIN'G A RIDGE ON A Hir.T, OF 



LIGHT YEIXOW S.\XDSTONE. 



Blocks of saudstorte hardened by the dyke are seen on the left-hand side cf the 



darker basalt. 



chasm of unknown depth. Fridthof Nansen, who in 

 1SS8 was the first to cross Greenland, compared the 

 inland ice to the gently sloping surface of a shield 

 hundreds or even many thousands of feet in thickness. 

 From the inland ice glaciers, like mighty tentacles, are 

 thrust outwards towards the sea, and as the ice reaches 

 water deep enough to buoy up the moving mass por- 

 tions are broken off as icebergs. One of the most 

 prolific berg- forming glaciers on the west coast stretches 

 across the head of the Jakobshavn Ice Fjord (lat. 

 69° N.). It has been calculated that the daily dis- 

 charge of ice throug'n this ice fjord amounts to 

 432,000,000 cubic feet. The surface of the water as 

 seen from the hummocky coast behind Jakobshavn 

 is a continuous mass of icebergs, some floating, some 

 >tranded, all huddled together in disorderly array, 

 suggesting the fall of a stupendous avalanche into the 

 waters of the fjord. At the western end of the fjord 

 the icebergs set out to sea drifting, it may be, many 



