PROF. NORDENSKIOLD, EXPEDITION TO GREENLAND. 411 



After passing some time at Sarpim-sak in collecting fossils, 

 we removed to Christianshaab, and thence onward to Leerbugten, 

 south of Claushavn. By means of certain arrangements made by 

 the Inspector, we were enabled to make a particularly interesting 

 tour inland, to the extremity of one of the largest ice-fjords in 

 Greenland — the ice-fjord of Jakobshavn. 



This fjord is found inserted on very early maps of Greenland, 

 though generally as a sound uniting the North Atlantic with 

 Baffin's Bay. It is now known that the supposed sound is only a 

 deep fjord, filled throughout its whole length with huge icebergs, 

 which completely close the fjord, not only to ships, but also to 

 whale-boats and umiaks, nay, even to kajaks (canoes). The shores 

 of the fjord are therefore uninhabited, and seldom visited. A 

 tradition exists among the Greenlanders, that the fjord was in 

 former times less obstructed by ice, and was consequently a good 

 hunting and fishing place ; and this is confirmed by the older 

 maps of the fjord, but especially by the numerous remains of old 

 dwellings, which are still met with along the shores, not only of 

 the principal fjord, but of its southern arm, Tessiursak, now 

 completely barricaded by icebergs and inaccessible from the sea 

 (not to be confounded with the fjord Tessiursarsoak which we had 

 just left). Tessiursak itself is still tolerably free from ice, and is 

 easily reached by dragging an umiak over the point which separates 

 the western shore of Tessiursak from the ocean. For such a 

 purpose, however, a traveller must take his umiak with him, partly 

 because he cannot obtain any boat at the now deserted Tessiursak, 

 partly because about half-way over the point he meets with a lake, 

 to go round which would be a considerable circuit. 



On our arrival at Leerbugten, we found, in consequence of the 

 Inspector's excellent arrangements, a Greenland family there to 

 meet us, and the women's boat, or " umiak," lay drawn up upon 

 the shore. The journey over the point was immediately com- 

 menced. Six men took the roomy umiak upon their shoulders, 

 others took our instruments, and provisions for us and our people 

 for two days. The way was first over a high ridge, which 

 separates the sea from the lake, on the shore of which the Green- 

 landers had pitched their summer tent. Here we rested awhile, 

 and tried the temperature of the water (12° Centigr.), by a bathe 

 in the lake, to the great astonishment of the Greenlanders. We 

 then rowed over the lake in the umiak, took it up and carried it 

 on our shoulders over another point, steeper but shorter than the 

 former, and clothed just at this time in all the colours that the 

 Flora of the extreme north can offer. On the other side of this 

 point was water again, not however fresh, but salt : it was the 

 above-mentioned southern arm of the Jakobshavn ice-§ord. The 

 umiak was again launched, and, after a row of a few hours, inter- 

 rupted by hunting after young Seagulls, we reached the spot where 

 Tessiursak falls into the main ice-fjord very near its inner 

 extremity. Here the water that was free, or nearly free, from ice 

 terminated, and we had to make our way along the southern shore 

 of the ice-fjord for a distance, not indeed long, but dangerous, on 



