CENTRAL ICE. 85 



had its origin within the Polar circle, and had been converted into ice. There 

 were no vast alluvions, no forest or animal traces borne down by liquid 

 torrents. Here was a plastic, moving, semi-solid mass, obliterating life, 

 swallowing rocks and islands, and ploughing its way with irresistible march 

 through the crust of an investing sea." 



As Katie, in this section of his work, just expatiates upon the 

 nature and quality of the whole of Greenland and its unknown 

 interior, it is chiefly at this place that I must refer to my previously 

 cited work ; in the first section of which, at page 10, 1 have treated 

 on the extension of the land-ice, and the origin of the floating ice- 

 bergs. But as the subject is rather comprehensive, I will here 

 confine myself to the following remarks : — 



The interior, with which the glacier stood in connection was : 

 "an ice-ocean, to the eye, of boundless dimensions." That this 

 ice-ocean could not be overlooked at that place certainly does not 

 signify much with regard to its extent ; but farther on, he remarked 

 that it occupies the whole centre of Greenland, right down to Cape 

 Farewell. Now, from what source does the author know this, as 

 he only cites a few places, quite in the neighbourhood of his winter 

 harbour, where he has followed the margin of the inland ice, and 

 had never been in the fjords of Greenland, between Upernivik and 

 Cape Farewell ? I for my part have employed eight years in ex- 

 amining to what degree the interior was covered with ice, by pur- 

 suing it from fjord to fjord ; and nevertheless I have been obliged 

 to confine myself to conjecture with regard to many extensive tracts 

 that lie between these fjords ; and my own explorations in this 

 direction, must, as we shall see, be supposed to have been unknown 

 to him. In the account of his first voyage, 1 he says of the Omenak 

 fjord, that he could see into its mouth whilst sailing up the Strait ; 

 that its interior had never yet been explored, and that there was 

 great probability that it passed right through the country to the 

 Atlantic Ocean. But if we admit this central ice-ocean as existing, 

 what does it then signify ? that this ice-ocean moves like a great 

 ice-river (from south to north ?), rolling cataracts of ice out to both 

 sides in the Atlantic and Greenland seas, until it reaches the northern 

 boundary of the country, and there pours forth a mighty frozen 

 stream, Humboldt glacier, in that unknown Arctic space ? I cannot 

 follow the author in his bold flight over the icy desert of Greenland, 

 and still less can I conceive that he, in all this, only sees a confir- 

 mation of what lie had already earlier foreseen in his own mind, if 

 he " should ever be fortunate enough to reach the northern coast of Green- 



1 'Grinnell Expedition,' 1854, p. •">:;. 



