652 THE JOURNAL OF GEOLOGY. 



general fact, the total amount of ice drifting south is liable to be 

 exaggerated in estimates based on the reports of coasting vessels. 

 My observations farther north lend support to this ; but of 

 course the observations of a single voyage are much too slender 

 to justify a conclusion. 



Early on the morning of the 12th we sighted Cape Desola- 

 tion, which lies about 150 miles west-northwest of Cape Farewell. 

 The first glimpse of the topography of Greenland was full of 

 suggestiveness. The aspect of its coastal mountains at once 

 arrested attention on account of their marked ruggedness and 

 angularity. The sky lines were strongly serrate, and the lower 

 angles generally sharp and harsh, except, in some measure, near 

 the base. Flowing contours did not much enter into the general 

 view, though they might be found here and there by search. 

 The dominant lines of sculpture lay in vertical, not in horizontal, 

 planes. The inference was, therefore, close at hand that they 

 owe their fashioning to the familiar meteoric agencies that work 

 vertically, and not to the horizontal rasping of ice flowing out 

 from the interior. This may not be wholly true of the lower 

 contours which could not be seen to good advantage. Glimpses 

 of the great inland ice cap were caught at intervals between the 

 mountain peaks. According .to the charts of Greenland, the 

 border of the inland ice here lies but a few miles back from the 

 coast line, and this nearness intensifies the significance of the 

 unsubdued angularity of the coastal mountains. The bearing of 

 this angular topography upon the problem of the former exten- 

 sion of the ice, and especially upon the broad question whether 

 the ice sheet of Greenland once crossed the Baffin basin and 

 became the source of the North American glaciation, as held by 

 some geologists, at once presented itself, and stimulated as care- 

 ful a scrutiny of the coastal topography as was practicable. This 

 line of observation was continued assiduously throughout the 

 whole length of coast followed, from Cape Desolation to Ingle- 

 field Gulf, as far as the circumstances of the voyage permitted, 

 both going and coming. Fogs and night made many breaks in 

 the series, but out of the something more than 1 100 miles of coast 



