124 THE GLACIAL LAKE AGASSIZ. 



Two years later, iu 1888, Dr. Fridtjof Nauseii crossed this ice-slieet 

 from east to west between latitude 64° 10' and 64° 45' north. The width 

 of the ice here is about 275 miles, extending into the ocean on the east, 

 but terminating on the west about 14 miles from the head of Ameralik 

 Fjord and 70 miles from the outer coast-line. For the first 15 miles in the 

 ascent from the east, rising to the altitude of 1,000 meters, or 3,280 feet, 

 the average gradient was nearly 220 feet per mile. In the next 35 miles 

 an altitude of 2,000 meters, or 6,560 feet, was reached; and the average 

 gradient in this distance, between 15 and 50 miles from the margin of the 

 ice, was thus about 94 feet per mile, or a slope very slightly exceeding 1 

 degi-ee. The highest part of the ice-sheet, about 112 miles from the point 

 of starting, was found to have an altitude of 2,718 meters, or about 8,920 

 feet. Its ascending slope, therefore, in the distance from 50 to 112 miles 

 was about 38 feet per mile. Thence descending westward, the gradients 

 are less steep, averaging about 25 feet per mile for nearly 100 miles to the 

 altitude of 2,000 meters, about 63 feet per mile for the next 52 miles of 

 distance and 1,000 meters of descent, and about 125 feet per mile for the 

 lower western border of the ice.^ 



Lieutenant Peary, in an expedition from Inglefield Gulf, near latitude 

 78°, on the northwest coast of Greenland, starting early iu May and 

 returning August 6, 1892, crossed the northwestern and northern parts of 

 this ice-sheet, reaching altitudes of 5,000 to 8,000 feet, and determining 

 approximately the northern Ijoundary of the ice from Petermanu Fjord to 

 the eastern coast at Independence Bay, in latitude 81° 37' and longitude 

 34° west from Greenwich. 



In comparing the slopes and altitudes of the upjjer limits of glaciation 

 on mountains in Maine, New Hampshire, and Kew York, with the«ice in 

 Greenland, we observe the remai-kal)le contrast that the former show 

 gradients onlv about half as steep as the latter. Mount Wasliington, as 

 before noted, indicates an average gradient of only about 25 feet per mile 

 for the rise of the ice surface along a distance of 220 miles from its margin 

 during the prinei^ial part of the Glacial period; to Mount Katahdin in 

 a similar distance it apjiears to have risen somewhat less steeply, or per- 



' The First Crossing of Greenland, Vol. II, jip. 464-466, with section and maps. 



