THE GREENLAND EXPEDITION OF 1895. 877 
occupied the valleys leading down to the sea. The northwest 
end of the peninsula bears the marks of the passage of ice over 
a considerable part of the coastal front. North of Nugsuak 
peninsula, and from that point to the south side of Melville Bay, 
the topography of the coast, so far as seen, indicated general 
though not universal glaciation. Thus the southwestern end of 
Svarten Huk peninsula (71° 30’) has a topography denoting the 
absence of glaciation. 
North of the Nugsuak peninsula it was often difficult to dis- 
tinguish between the topography of the mainland and that of the 
islands. Ubekyendt Island (lat. 71° 15’), or at any rate much of 
its west front, has a serrate skyline. North of 72° 30’ also, 
the topography is not such as to denote continuous glaciation 
over the outlying islands, even if the mainland was covered 
down to the water level. It would appear that the comparative 
phenomena of islands and mainland north and south do not 
agree—for south of latitude 70° the islands lying near the 
coast correspond in topography with the mainland opposite. 
Except for thirty miles or so east of Cape York, the coast of 
Melville Bay was not seen. Along that part of the coast which 
was seen, the ice reaches the sea so generally, that something 
like three-fourths of the coast line is composed of it. This ice 
is not the edge of the ice-cap, strictly speaking, but consists 
rather of a succession of broad glaciers separated from each 
other by short distances only. In spite of the iciness of the 
coast it is doubtful if all its islands, even but a few miles from the 
coast, were ever overtopped by glacier ice. 
North of Cape York, the ice-cap is nowhere distant from the 
coastal margin of the upland; yet there are many considerable 
stretches where there is no evidence, either in the topography or 
in the surface formations, that the ice ever reached the sea as a 
continuous sheet. In many places there is evidence that the edge 
of the ice-cap approached the coast more closely than now, in rela- 
tively recent times, and that its excess of material was discharged in 
the form of glaciers, some of which occupied valleys now free from 
them. But even where the ice has been recently extended, there 
