PROF. NORDENSKIOlD, EXPEDITION TO GREENLAND. 433 



and paths, which in Greenland remain unobliterated for a great 

 length of 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 ?), titaniferous 

 iron, 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 

 cliffs on the western side of the peninsula one can see even that 

 dolerite is lying on sandstone of the same loose character as the 

 superjacent sand and sandstone beds. 



Immediately on the other side of the low isthmus, which rises 

 only a few feet above the water, uniting the peninsula with the 

 mainland, 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 shale, and crossed by vast plutonic 

 veins («, «', a!'^ a'"), which seem not to have had the smallest 

 influence on the sand through which they have passed. Only 

 here and there a grain of sand is found melted, or rather rusted, 

 into the surface of the dyke.f The upper part of the dyke 

 generally forms a ridge standing up from the surrounding loose 

 layers of earth. Between the layers of shale we find one or two 

 small seams of coal, and in the sand here and there a carbonised 

 stem of a tree, but no real impressions of leaves, until we come to 

 a height of 1,200 feet above the sea. J Here commences sand or 

 sandstone, with clay, covered by shale, and interstratified with 

 thin beds of ferruginous clay-rock (6), often divided into large 

 or small lenticular masses, and extremely rich in Miocene fossils. 

 These occur not only in the ferruginous clay, but also in the 

 surrounding somewhat hardened sandstone, and may perhaps 

 be obtained from this sandstone in greater perfection than from 

 the extremely hard and unmanageable ferruginous clay. We 

 often found in the sandstone nodules and flat ellipsoids of ferrugi- 

 nous clay so full of remains of plants, especially on the surface, 

 that it looks as if these nodules, before they had been imbedded 

 in the sand and hardened, 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, acquires 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 



* Rink 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. 



f The remarkably slight effect which the eruptive rock has produced on the 

 surrounding layers of sand astonished Mr, Brown also. 



X 1084 Inglefield ; 1175 mean of six measurements with the aneroid b}^ 

 Whymper ; 1203 by the aneroid used by the Expedition of 1870. 



36122. E E 



