^. 



Figure 2-19. — Weather station, Thule, Greenland. 



The Upernivik region from Svartenhuk to Cape York is a laby- 

 rinth of skerries. The whole strip of land, here narrowed down, 

 is broken up into a host of islands mostly of moderate height and 

 rounded shape. Some of the sounds have depths up to 500 fath- 

 oms, whereas others are barely covered with water. A prominent 

 feature is Melville Bay, with the inland ice reaching to the very 

 edge of its shores at nearly every point. 



A feature of the Cape York district is Smith Sound separating 

 the large Hayes Peninsula back of Cape York from Ellesmere 

 Island. The peninsula is a plateau 2,200 feet high divided in its 

 central part by the deep Inglefield Gulf. 



North Greenland in the west is separated from the Hayes Penin- 

 sula by the Humboldt Glacier, largest in the Arctic. The northern- 

 most part of the island, from west to east, is divided into prominent 

 areas not covered by inland ice, named in order : Washington Land, 

 Nyeboe Land, Peary Land, and Prince Christian's Land. In this 

 area several long fiords penetrate inland, the most prominent being 

 Sherard Osborn, Victoria, Independence, and Danmark. In gen- 

 eral the north coast is alpine in character with peaks more than 

 3,500 feet in the west, rising to 6,500 in some places in Peary Land 

 in the east. One of the interesting geographical facts is the rela- 

 tively ice-free nature of this northernmost land area. Rivers and 

 lakes develop when the snow melts in summer. 



The northeast section of Greenland extends from Danmark 

 Fiord to the seventy-fourth parallel in King Christian X Land. 

 Here and farther south to Scoresby Sound, the fiord systems intro- 

 duce a new type of coastal development. In the general aspect of 



62 



