PROF. NORDENSKIOlD, EXPEDITION TO GREENLAND. 407 



Auleitsivikfjord, together with the surrounding valleys, moun- 

 tains, and hills. The ice has accordingly, during the last 

 thousand or hundred thousand years, considerably retired. Now, 

 on the contrary, its limit in these parts is advancing, and that by 

 no means slowly. Of late years the rowing of an " umiak " in 

 Tessiursarsoak has been rendered difficult by ice-blocks fallen 

 from the glaciers, which is said not to have been the case for- 

 merly ; and one of our rowers, Henry Sissarniak, even affirms 

 that he rowed without obstruction seven years ago round an 

 island, which now forms a peninsula jutting out from the margin 

 of the inland ice. Many similar examples in North Greenland 

 are adduced : thus, for example, the glacier that issues into 

 Blasedal, near Godhavn, has, since the time when Dr. Eink 

 mapped that place, according to the statement of Inspector Smith, 

 advanced much farther into the valley, — in the fjords around 

 Omenak the ice has advanced considerably within the memory of 

 man, — a path formerly often frequented between Sarfarfik and 

 Sakkak * is now closed by inland ice, etc., etc. I shall have occa- 

 sion hereafter to mention a similar case in the ice-fjord at Jakobs- 

 havn. In a word, there can be no doubt that in many parts of 

 North Greenland the inland ice is certainly gaining ground ; but 

 I nevertheless think that the conclusion drawn by many persons, 

 that the whole coast of North Greenland will, at no very distant 

 period, be again covered with ice, is somewhat too hastily made. 

 These persons, in observing the phenomena relative to this 

 subject, not only seem to have forgotten to register the examples 

 occasionally adduced by the Greenlanders of a retiring of the ice 

 — a less striking and therefore less observed phenomenon, but 

 they have also attributed far too great weight to an experience 

 extending only over a few years, which may perhaps have been 

 peculiarly unfavourable. On the contrary^ the extensive, rounded, 

 polished, and . grooved border of land, which almost everywhere 

 separates the inland ice from the extreme coast, shows plainly 

 that the inland ice has in many places during the last geological 

 period retired several miles. That this border-land has been 

 uncovered later even than that at Spitzbergen is proved by this 

 fact among others, viz., that not one of the numberless small 

 sea-basins in North Greenland, in spite of the suitableness of the 

 locality for moss-vegetation, has yet become filled with turf, even 

 to the depth of a few feet ; and this indicates that the slip of ice- 

 free land is but a child of yesterday. It is true that " turf" is 

 the Greenlander's principal winter fuel, but what he means by 

 that name is, in almost all instances, merely an earth consisting 

 of rotten moss, grass-roots, guano, and refuse, which to the 



* At Sakkak (" Sunside," Giesecke) the great valley which runs into the 

 heart of the Noursoak Peninsula is drained by a small stream that appears to 

 divide the gneiss of the mainland from the trap-formation of Noursoak. The 

 glaciers on both Disco and Noursoak appear, from this place, to be steadily 

 advancing, " so much so that their progress can be noted year by year," as 

 noted long ago also by Giesecke. The glaciers to the south, however, are, in 

 Mr. Whymper's opinion, decidedly shrinking. (Mr. E. Wiiymper, Brit. Assoc. 

 Rep. for 1869, pp. 2 and 3.)— Editor. 



