NEW PHYSIOGRAPHY AND GEOLOGY OF GREENLAND 43 



These I have explored by sledge and motor boat in their entire 

 extent, covering much of the ground several times. 



The reliief map showed that the gneiss surface reached an altitude 

 of 2,000 meters in the northern parts of the country and also at 

 about 70° N. lat., both on the west and east coasts. The rest 

 of the country showed a varied topography of highly different types, 

 apparently distributed quite irregularly. 



I soon felt, however, that my relief map was characterized by 

 too subjective a view; I had colored large areas about which next 

 to nothing was known. A cartographer working exclusively on 

 low ground will perhaps regard a certain area as an upland, whereas 

 the same region will seem low to another cartographer surrounded 

 by high mountains. On the west and north coasts, where the 

 ground was known to me through personal investigation, I could 

 guard against error fairly well, but on the east coast the coloring was 

 doubtful. In other words, I had to rely exclusively upon the figures 

 given on the maps. 



If we generalize some small region in Greenland, e.g., a trade 

 settlement, we get, as a rule, the following picture : Off the coast a 

 number of low skerries, a little farther inland hills — a number of 

 peaks which for each locality have nearly all the same elevation. 

 This is practically the case everywhere in the gneiss area, whether 

 it be low and level, or upland with evenly rounded hills, such as 

 were carved out by the action of the inland ice, or rugged peaks 

 formed by the action of local glaciers and weathering after the ice 

 age. Everywhere the numerous almost equally high eminences 

 seem to be the remains of a once level plain, the true surface of the 

 original Greenland, which has subsequently been more or less 

 dissected by erosion. It now became my object to gain some idea 

 of this original peneplain. 



On a large map of Greenland I marked all known heights (about 

 1,200) in their proper places, and projected each figure at right 

 angles to a line parallel with the coast, marking it as an ordinate on 

 the hne. Hence for each figure there is a corresponding point at a 

 greater or less distance from the line, according to the altitude of 

 the peak in question. In a locality with many figures the points 

 nearest the Hne are derived from the skerries, next come some 



