WHAT IS GREENLAND? 25 



are of little moment to the movement of this (or any other great 

 mass of land-ice) provided tee have snoiv enough. In the Appendix to 

 Lyell's ' Antiquity of Man,' p. 508, it is stated that Professor Otto 

 Torrell, of Lund, Director of the Geological Survey of Sweden, 

 from Mount Karsok in the Noursak 1'eninsula, North Greenland, 

 saw the inland ice with some " abrupt mountains standing up here 

 and there," and that, at Upernavik, Rink saw moraines on the ice. 1 

 am inclined to believe that these were only local, and the mountains 

 were not in the midst of the inland ice proper, but only part of 

 those on the outskirting land. No moraine comes over it from the 

 south. 



11. What is Greenland? — Greenland, as it appears on our maps, is 

 a huge wedge of land hanging down from the North Pole. Add to 

 this the exaggerated proportions which Mercator's projection gives 

 to it, and the ranges of interior mountains which imaginative geo- 

 graphers now and then portray in its interior, and we are all 

 sufficiently familiar with its outline. It is now more than half a 

 century ago since Giesecke, 1 who had long resided in the country, 

 expressed his opinion that it was merely a collection of islands 

 bound together by ice ; and from what I have said, further research 

 has not invalidated, though it may have supported and extended 

 his views. Dr. Petermann considered that it might extend in a 

 more or less unbroken Hue to Wrangell's Land, north of Behring 

 Strait. With the views of Giesecke I am inclined to concur. That 

 the idea of Kane and Hayes, that it ends in an " open Polar Sea," is 

 unsupported and unreasonable, there can, I think, be little doubt, 

 and the idea is not now coincided in by many whose opinions on 

 such a matter can be received as of much moment. That it is a 

 collection of islands bound together by the inland ice and its out- 

 pouring glaciers I have already ventured to state my belief as being 

 a well-observed fact, and that, in a collection of broken islands, it 

 extends throughout the Arctic Polar basin perhaps on to Wrangell's 

 Land is, I further believe, not at all improbable. Shortly before 

 writing these notes I read the admirable papers of Lieutenant 

 Payer on Kaiser Franz Joseph Fjord; 2 and while admitting that this 

 and many other east-coast fjords may penetrate the land for great 

 distances, I do not think that his views tend materially to alter the 

 doctrine I have stated. It was luim' a belief that some of the west- 



1 Appendix to Scoresby's 'Voyage to the Northern Whale Fishery,' p. 467, and 

 Scoresby, ibid., p. 327. 



2 'Geogr. .Mitt., Ih71,' Heft. iv. and v. This is supposed to Btn fcch fm in From 

 the east onaot, in Wit. fu) (virfi picture of it hy Payer, in Petermann'e 'Geog. 

 Mitth.,' 187!. and in the ' Leisure Hour' for Oct. L87J ) 



