Prof. JSfordenskiold — Expedition to Greenland. 455 



time,^ and a number of graves, still serve to remind us of the now 

 dead or scattered little colony. The peninsula itself is formed of a 

 rusty brown, rather coarse-grained dolerite, composed of two species 

 of felspar (labradorite and sanidin?), titanic iron, crystallized in 

 thin hexagonal laminae and augite. In this it differs from the 

 genuine Greenland basalt and basalt-tuff, although it evidently only 

 forms the oldest link of the vast volcanic and plutonic chain of rocks 

 of North-west Greenland. At the steep cliifs on the western side 

 of the peninsula one can see even that dolerite is lying on sand- 

 stone of the same loose character as the superjacent sand and sand- 

 stone beds. 



Immediately on the other side of the low isthmus, that rises only 

 a few feet above the water, and unites this peninsula with the main 

 land, we first meet with the above-described Atane strata (e), then 

 follows sand, after which a basalt bed again, covered by layers of 

 sand alternating with slate, and crossed by vast plutonic veins (a, 

 a', a", a"'), which seem not to have had the smallest influence on the 

 sand through which they have broken. Only here and there a 

 grain of sand is found melted or rather rusted into the surface of the 

 dyke, the upper part of which now generally forms a ridge ^ standing 

 up from the surrounding loose layers of earth. Between the layers 

 of slate we find one or two small seams of coal, and in the sand here 

 and there a carbonized stem of a tree, but no real impressions of 

 leaves, till we come to a height of 1200 feet above the sea.^ Here 

 commences sand or sandstone mixed with clay, covered by a toler- 

 ably firm slate, and interstratified with thin beds of ferruginous 

 claystone (&), often broken up into larger or smaller lenticular masses, 

 and extremely rich in Miocene fossils. These occur not only in the 

 ferruginous claj^ but also in the surrounding somewhat hardened 

 sandstone, and may perhaps be obtained from this sandstone in greater 

 perfection than from extremely hard and unmanageable ferruginous 

 clay. We often find in sandstone nodules and flat ellipsoids of 

 ferruginous clay so full of remains of plants, especially on the sur- 

 face, that it looks as if these nodules, before they had hardened and 

 been imbedded in the sand, had been rolled in a heap of leaves. The 

 ferruginous clay has, when newly broken, a dark grey fracture, 

 which, by exposure to the air and the polishing effect of the sand, ac- 

 quires as it were a polish and a brick-brown colour. Pieces of it are 

 plentifully scattered about in the confined locality where these 

 vegetable-remains occur. In the same sandstone, a little south of 

 the spot where the impressions of leaves are met with, may be 

 found at the edge of the glen, very deep at this spot, trunks of trees, 

 the tops of which rise above the sand, or form black spots in the 

 white sand. An excavation was made in our presence, and we 



' Eink mentions paths still remaining in districts uninhabited since the time of the 

 old Northmen colonists, and we ourselves could clearly distinguish at Kaja the paths 

 round the long deserted house-sites there. 



2 The remarkably slight effect which the eruptive rock has produced on the sur- 

 rounding layers of sand astonished Mr. Brown. 



^ 1084 Inglefield ; 1175 mean of six measurements with the aneroid by "Whymper; 

 1203 by the aneroid used by the Expedition of 1870. 



