48; 



NA TURE 



{^March 25, 1886 



exploration of this same Griiinell Land. Previously we 

 only knew its coasts and the country bordering on them 

 in the neighbourhood of Discovery Harbour. Aldrich 

 carried the north coast as far west as 85° W. long. Much 

 of this outline has now been filled up. Archer Fjord has 

 been traced to its head ; a large portion of the interior 

 has been opened up ; while on the southern coast another 

 fiord, Greely Fjord, has been discovered, and the coasts 

 beyond seen stretching northwards and southwards. In 

 the spring and summer of 1S82 Greely himself made two 

 considerable journeys into the interior, when he made 

 discoveries which form an important addition to our 

 knowledge of the physical geography of the Arctic re- 

 gions. Bordering on 82° N. is a considerable freshwater 

 lake (Hazen), skirted on the north by the lofty Garfield 

 and United States Ranges and westwards by the Conger 

 Mountains. Around Lake Hazen are a series of small 

 lakes, and many streams which send their waters into 

 Lake Hazen. Even in April the river which discharges 

 into Chandler Fjord was found quite open in part of its 

 course, and the country generally remarkably free of 

 snow. In summer the valleys give birth to a compara- 

 tively luxuriant vegetation, which serves as pasturage for 

 considerable game. Besides grass in plenty, willows, 

 beds of dryas and saxifrages were common ; butterflies 

 added brightness and gaiety to the scene ; bumble-bees 

 and " devil's darning-needles " flitted about. Ample 

 remains of recent Eskimo settlements were foimd, and 

 fossil testimonies to the former temperate character of the 

 climate and the recent elevation of the whole region. 

 Unfortunately, though very excellent collections seem to 

 have been made, none of the members of the Expedition 

 were specially qualified to make the most of the rare 

 opportunity for thorough scientific investigation. Many 

 Eskimo relics were collected, but a study on the spot of 

 the sites of dwellings and remains by one skilled in such 

 investigations would have yielded valuable results to 

 ethnology. Still Major Greely and his men did their 

 best, and the collections they made and information they 

 collected will form important and welcome additions to 

 science. Even on the south side of Archer Fjord, near 

 Cape Baird, a fossil forest was discovered, one tree over 

 a foot in diameter being found at an elevation of 800 feet 

 above the sea. Of Grinnell Land Major Greely writes : 

 "This fertile belt, 150 miles long and 40 wide, extends 

 from Robeson and Kennedy Channels to Greely Fjord 

 and the Western Polar Ocean. Its iceless condition 

 depends entirely on its physical configuration. The 

 Abrupt, broken character of the country makes it im- 

 possible for the winter's scanty snow to cover it. Long, 

 narrow, and numerous valleys not only offer the greatest 

 amount of bare soil at favourable angles to the heating 

 rays of the constant summer sun, but also serve as natural 

 beds, with steep gradients, for the torrents from melting 

 snows. The summer rivers drain rapidly the surface 

 water, and long before continuous and sharply-freezing 

 weather comes, the land is generally free from snow, and 

 the large rivers have dwindled to brooks. The deep 

 intersecting fjords not only receive the discharging rivers, 

 but, from their frozen surfaces, furnish large quantities of 

 saline efflorescence, which, mixing with the land-snow, 

 facilitates greatly its disappearance in the coming spring. 

 Where such conditions do not prevail in Grinnell Land, 



ice-caps are found similar to the inclosed ice of Green- 

 land traversed by Nordenskjbld." 



Abutting on the north shore of Lake Hazen through a 

 gap in the Garfield Range, is a magnificent glacier, with a 

 convex face some five miles long, and 150 feet high, an 

 outlier of the great ice-cap which covers all the north of 

 Grinnell Land. Major Greely estimates the area of this 

 northern ice-cap at 3000 square miles. " There is but 

 little doubt," he says, "that the Challenger Mountains 

 bound this ice-cap to the north-west, and that its northern 

 face drains through Clements Markham Inlet, and the 

 many ravines which Aldrich speaks of as running far 

 inland from the bays on the shores of the Polar Sea." 



Similarly on the south side of this Arctic oasis Lock- 

 wood and Brainard found a magnificent glacial wall 

 extending between Archer Fjord and Greely Fjord, 

 with a vertical face of an average height of 1 50 feet. From 

 one mountain the wall was seen trending for forty miles to 

 the south-west. The surface of the Agassiz mer-dc-glace 

 itself is very elevated, and extended southwards as far as 

 the eye could reach. Lockwood thought that it must be 

 of enormous depth in the interior. No moraines or 

 foreign matter of any kind were observed on the surface, 

 and crevices were e.xtremely few and insignificant. Of 

 moraines along the wall there were very few. The wall 

 was generally of a uniforni white colour. The ground to 

 the north of it, especially on the divide, had a singularly 

 smooth appearance, as if it had once formed the base of 

 this mass of ice. We have here evidently a region of 

 singular interest, well deserving the study of the geologist, 

 and especially of the paleontologist. 



Major Greely devotes a chapter to Polar ice, in which 

 he describes some of its more usual forms ; this having 

 already been very exhaustively done by Nordenskjold in 

 his " Voyage of the Ve(^a." Major Greely, however, 

 specially discusses the formation of pateocrystic ice. It 

 will be remembered that Sir George Nares attempts to 

 account for the formation of these enormous thick masses 

 of floating ice by supposing that they are due to succes- 

 sive accretions at the base. Major Greely rebuts this 

 hypothesis, and maintains that the origin of palaiocrystic 

 bergs is similar to the flat-topped bergs of the Antarctic. 

 He believes that the ice is in origin a land-formation, 

 probably the accumulation of centuries on some islands 

 far to the north of Grinnell Land ; that it gets shunted off 

 into the sea, and is floated southwards towards Robeson 

 Channel. We suspect that neither hypothesis can be 

 considered satisfactory ; and though we do not think Major 

 Greely has much to advance in favour of his hypothesis, 

 his description of the structure of these great floes 

 is at least instructive. The tidal observations made 

 regularly during the two years are likely to lead to valu- 

 able results. Not only were observations taken at Fort 

 Conger, but simultaneous observations, when possible, 

 were taken along Grinnell Land coast. These, combined 

 with the observations of 1875 and those of Bessel in 

 1 87 1, may enable us to determine satisfactorily the co- 

 tidal curves of Robeson and Kennedy Channels and the 

 entrance to the Polar Sea. 



Much exploration, it should be said, was also car- 

 ried out along all the coasts around the' Station, and 

 Dr. Pavy made an unsuccessful attempt to push north- 

 wards from Cape Joseph Henry. Very fair supplies of 



