116 Dr. Walter Flight — History of Meteorites. 



and other islands north of Disko, and, on his return to Godhavn at 

 the end of August in the same year, not only learned from 'the 

 Greenlanders that masses such as he sought for had been found, but 

 he was shown a specimen of meteoric iron in confirmation of their 

 statement. They were discovered, not at Fortuna Bay, but further 

 eastward along the shore, at Ovifak, between Laxe-bugt 1 and Disko 

 fjord, a spot than which there is none more difficult to reach along 

 the whole of the coast of Danish Greenland, as it lies open to the 

 south wind, and is inaccessible in even a very moderately rough sea. 

 Nordenskjold at once chartered two whale-boats, manned by Green- 

 landers, and set sail for Ovifak, where, the sea being calm, they were 

 able to land, and the stone at which they lay to proved afterwards to 

 be the largest block of meteoric iron that they were to discover. 



As the readers of this Magazine are already familiar with the 

 description which Nordenskjbld gives of the condition under which 

 these masses are found, we may break off here to consider the more 

 recently published report of Nauckhoff, the geologist of the expedition 

 of 1871, of the peculiar geological characters of the rocks at Ovifak 

 (Blafjell, or Blue Cliffs) with which they are associated. 



The surface of the south-western and western portion of the 

 island of Disko is composed of basalt, which extends as far as 

 Smith's Sound, and was probably erupted in Miocene times. In only 

 a few points of the island, Godhavn, the islets of Fortuna Bay and 

 Nangiset, the primitive rock is observed. It consists for the most 

 part of slaty gneiss, passing over in some places into mica- schist and 

 often traversed by veins of pegmatite. Granite was nowhere seen. 



Immediately overlying the gneiss is a basalt breccia of dark 

 blackish-green colour, some two hundred feet in thickness. In 

 places the large angular fragments are cemented together with 

 calcite ; as a rule, however, they are so small that the rock at some 

 distance appears homogeneous. Few cavities are observed, and they 

 are usually filled with calcite, rarely with zeolites. Above the breccia 

 lies a bed of basalt- wacke of rust-brown colour, and with amygda- 

 loidal structure, the cavities containing apophyllite, chabasite, levynite, 

 stilbite, desmine, mesotype, analcime, and other zeolites. Over this 

 again rises a bed of basalt of vast thickness, sometimes attaining 

 one thousand feet, and of a dark greyish green hue ; it occurs not 

 unfrequently in vertical regular six-sided columns. The texture is 

 generally crypto-crystalline, though exhibiting in places the char- 

 acters of anamesite and dolerite ; the few cavities are filled with 

 chalcedony, rarely with zeolites. At Ovifak the cliffs rise to a 

 height of 2,000 feet above the sea-level. The upper portion consists 

 of compact dark-coloured basalt. Proceeding downwards on the 

 nearly vertical face, we see thick beds of red- wacke and basalt-clay, 

 until already at mid height the face is hidden by vast screes of 

 large and small fragments of basalt. Where the cascades of surface- 

 water have removed the finer portions of the talus, and the face can 

 be inspected to greater depths between the larger blocks of basalt, 

 the basalt- wacke is seen which overlies the breccia. 



1 See Geol. Mag.. 1872, Vol. IX. PI. VII. In this map two bays called Laxebugt 

 are given; the one mentioned above is situated to the north of Disko fjord. 



