390 PROF. NORDENSKIOLI), EXPEDITION TO GREENLAND. 



of these regions have once been covered with glaciers, w^hich have 

 left unmistakeable marks of their presence in the boulders, which 

 are met with scattered high up on the sides of the mountains, in 

 the rounding off, in the polishing and grooving of the surface, 

 and in the deep fjords, evidently scooped out by glaciers, which 

 distinguish the western coasts of both Scandinavia and Greenland. 

 There is, however, this difference, that whereas the glacial period 

 of Scandinavia belongs to an age long past, that of Greenland, 

 though it is receding,* still continues. While, in fact, numberless 

 indications show that the inland-ice has in ancient times covered 

 even the skerries round the coast, these are now so free from ice 

 that a traveller in most places has to advance several miles into 

 the country before reaching the border of the present inland-ice. 

 It is at least certain that wherever any one hitherto has penetrated 

 into the land he has met with its border, f and in all instances has 

 seen it from some neighbouring mountain-top, rising inwards with 

 a gradual and regular ascent, till it levels undistinguishably hill 

 and dale beneath its frozen covering, like the waves of a vast 

 ocean. 



Of this inland-ice the natives entertain a superstitious fear, an 

 awe or prejudice, which has, in some degree, communicated itself 

 to such Europeans as have long resided in Greenland. It is thus 

 only that we can explain the circumstance, that in the whole 

 thousand years during which Greenland has been known, so few 

 efforts have been made to pass over the ice farther into the 

 country. There are many reasons for believing that the inland- 

 ice merely forms a continuous ice-frame, running parallel with the 

 coast, and surrounding a land free from ice, perhaps even in its 

 southern parts woody, which might perhaps be of no small 

 economical importance to the rest of Greenland. The only serious 

 attempt that has hitherto been made, in the parts of Greenland 

 colonized by Danes,J to advance in that direction was made by — 



A Danish expedition^ fitted out for the purpose in 1728. — A 

 Danish governor. Major Paars, with an armed company, artillery, 



* Certainly receding, although the inland ice sometimes makes its way to 

 the sea, and thus tracts which have been free from ice are again covered. We 

 have an example of this in the ice-fjord of Jacobshavn, of which more 

 hereafter. 



f I have, however, met with persons in Greenland who do not consider it 

 as fully proved, that the inland-ice really does form an inner border to the 

 whole of the external coast. Many Danes have resided several years in 

 Greenland without ever having seen the inland-ice. 



J Dr. Hayes's remarkable journey, in October 1860, over the fields of 

 ice that cover the peninsula between Whale Sound and Kennedy Channel 

 (78° N.L.), was performed, not upon the real inland-ice, but upon a smaller 

 ice-field connected with the inland-ice, like the ice-fields at Noursoak peninsula. 

 The character of the ice here seems to have differed considerably from that 

 of the real inland-ice. Hayes ascended the glacier at Port Foulke, on the 

 23rd of October, and advanced on foot, the first day 5, the second 30, the 

 third 25 miles, in all 60 English miles. He was here forced to return, in 

 consequence of a storm. The height of the spot where he turned back above 

 the level of the sea was 5,000 feet (^The Open Polar Sea, by Dr. I. I. Hayes, 

 pp. 130-136). 



