GENERAL GEOLOGICAL RELATIONS. 345 
deeply indented coast within a zone, not over 75 miles from east to west, 
extending from latitude 69° 15’ to 72° 15’ north. The sedimentary ter- 
ranes are probably not less than 3,500 feet in thickness. They rest on a 
very irregular, even hilly, floor of gneiss, granite, diorite, and old basalts, 
and they are covered almost throughout by apparently regularly hori- 
zontally bedded flows of Tertiary basalt. Although the latter has been 
subject to erosion to a great extent, it still retains a thickness of over 
3,000 feet at a few points, while in the peak Kilertinguak it appears to 
exceed 4,000 feet. The clastic rocks have a light average dip to the west- 
ward on the south side of the peninsula, though locally they are highly 
variable in attitude as well as in thickness. The lowest sedimentary 
terranes lie below tide level between the old crystalline hillocks or knobs 
which rise here and there several hundred feet above tide, even far out 
in the interior of the sedimentary zone or belt, as it may for convenience 
be considered. It follows from this condition that the oldest sediments, 
probably Cretaceous in age, are below tide level. 
The youngest Tertiary terranes are often interbedded with the basalts, 
while in certain areas both the Cretaceous and Tertiary deposits are cut 
at various angles by numerous, sometimes intersecting, dikes. 
Nugsuak peninsula, the field of the writers’ observations, lies some- 
what obliquely between 69° 55’ and 70° 57’ north. From the nearest 
point between the Karajak fiord and the Torsukatak glacier at its base 
to the western extremity is about 90 miles, the width for nearly two- 
thirds of its extent being about 30 miles. The Cretaceous and Ter- 
tiary deposits constitute the western two-thirds of the peninsula, the Ter- 
tiary sediménts continuing to near its western extremity. The interior 
of the peninsula is either covered by local ice caps or it is unexplored, 
so that, with the exception of Ifsorisok, an inland point near the western 
end of the peninsula, the Cretaceous and Tertiary have been seen only 
beneath the basalt along the coasts or along two short river valleys. 
Of the three divisions of the Greenland Cretaceous established by Heer 
on paleontological evidence, the Kome or lowest series has hitherto been 
definitely recognized only along the greater portion of the north coast 
from Kook to Ekorgfat, no fossils of the Upper Cretaceous and Tertiary 
being found in this district,* although at Ujarartorsuak the sediments 
have been supposed to be 2.500 feet thick. Westward from Ekoregfat, as 
far as Iterdlak, the sedimentaries contain invertebrate fossils, which are 
regarded as probably of the age of the Middle (Atane) division of the 
Cretaceous. AI] the fossil plants found in this interval on the north coast, 
and consequently all the sedimentary terranes from Kook to Ekorefat, 
* Mention should be made of Tertiary fossiliferous morainal material on the surface of the glacier 
at Asalkak, 10 miles east of Kook, as these are the only Tertiary fossils known on the north coast. 
