26 CAN GREENLAND BE CROSSED? 



coast fjords — particularly those about Onienak Fjord and Disco 

 Bay— cut Greenland in two (see p. 42), and the Eskimo to this 

 day have traditions of timber drifting out, and even of men coming 

 through these fjords from the east coast. But whether this was 

 so or not in former times, we know this is not so now, and as all 

 of the west Greenland fjords are known as to their termination, 

 there need be little or no doubt as to the fact of Franz Joseph Fjord 

 not now reaching through to the west coast. Though the exact 

 heads of some of these fjords have not been reached, it is known 

 that they are terminated by the ice face of a glacier. So that, 

 though there may not be now water communication between the 

 east and west coast, it is just possible that at one time, before the 

 spread of the inland ice choked up these fjords (as we know it has 

 done Jakobshavn ice fjord and others within the memory of man), 

 it may have been so in former times ; and even yet there may be 

 no land shutting off the one end of the fjord from the other. The 

 Germans did not see the inland ice. That means nothing more 

 than that they did not penetrate far enough to pass over the out- 

 skirting land. 



12. Can Greenland be crossed?— -It may, I think, over the smooth, 

 snow-covered inland ice at certain seasons of the year, say in 

 May, when it is tolerably mild, and the whole summer is before 

 us, and the snow has not yet melted off the ice. Later in the 

 'season the snow melts off the ice, and, as happened in our 

 case, travel was impossible with sledges. Later, again, as when 

 Dalager and Hayes travelled, the winter is coming on, the nights 

 are dark, and the cold is intense. After much hardship and with a 

 fortuitous concourse of favourable circumstances, the country might 

 be crossed to the east coast, but I do not think the travellers could 

 return the same way. For even were it possible for them to carry 

 provisions for themselves and dogs, even allowing them to eat 

 their spare dogs now and then, it would certainly not be possible 

 to carry enough for the return journey also, if even the snow cover- 

 ing still remained on the ice. It would be too great a risk to 

 depend on getting provisions by reindeer-hunting on the east coast, 

 so that a depot or a ship would be needed to await them there. 

 To return down the east coast would be almost as dangerous and 

 risky as to return acro.-s the inland ice. However, in South Green- 

 land, where the continent is narrow, it might be possible to accom- 

 plish this. Hitherto 1 have spoken of a journey from the west to 

 the east coast, because visits to the latter coast are so rare and 

 difficult, that I had left out of account the chances of any one ever 

 attempting it there. Still there is a chance of it being done, and 



