NEW PHYSIOGRAPHY AND GEOLOGY OF GREENLAND 57 



and Devonian ?) are found. Sediments are found only in a small 

 area in the extreme south. It is the so-called Igaliks sandstone, 

 a reddish unfossiliferous sandstone with many diabasic dikes. It 

 has formerly been classed as Devonian but must now be regarded 

 as somewhat earlier (Cambrian-Ordovician) . In the west, and 

 especially in the east, the northern part is covered by basalts. 



The gneiss area shows no great fissures or cleavages, but this 

 may be due to defective examination. It seems natural to refer 

 it to the great Canadian shield which, as we know, is distinguished 

 by its great uniformity. 



2. The northern gneiss area. — This forms the greater part of 

 the northern half of Greenland. On the south the limit is formed 

 by the above-noted depression at 70° N. lat. It is limited on the 

 west by Baffin Bay. Toward the north the gneiss can be traced 

 as far as Kane Basin and to Danmark Fiord on the east coast. 

 Tov/ard the Atlantic there are great fracture lines of which the 

 inmost form the eastern boundary. The surface slopes gently 

 from south to north. There is, however, another dip with an 

 east-west trend. Hence the lowest tracts are found in northwest 

 Greenland. The gneiss is very uniform everywhere; batholiths 

 occur but have not yet been examined. In the Cape York district 

 there seem to have been tectonic disturbances (in the Ordovician ?), 

 though to no great extent. In the north great portions of the 

 gneiss surface are covered with sediments. In the east, too, in 

 Dronning Louises Land, there are sediments. This gneiss area, too, 

 is naturally connected with the Canadian shield. 



3. The great Paleozoic transgression in northwest Greenland.^ — ■ 

 In the south the sediments may be traced to a line running from 

 Cape York to the head of Danmark Fiord, in the east they reach 

 the Atlantic over a short stretch, on the north they are bounded 

 by a folded chain whose southern boundary runs from a point some 

 distance south of Fr. Hyde Fiord to Polaris Harbor in Robeson 

 Channel. Westward the same strata are found over great portions 

 of the Arctic archipelago, and the transgression has already been 

 known from these parts since the middle of the last century. Every- 

 where the strata He almost undisturbed on the gneiss surface, the 



^ Studied and described by the present writer in Stratigraphy of Northwest Greenland. 



