260 R. S. TARR — FORMER EXTENSION OF CORNELL GLACIER. 



is opportunity to find proof. At the Devil's Thumb, 5 miles from the 

 present margin, the glacier overrode an elevation of 2,650 feet above sea- 

 level, and hence at this point had a thickness of certainly not less than 

 3,000 feet, for the depth of the fiord must be added to the mountain 

 height, and then a certain amount must be added to the thickness in 

 order that the ice might move and carry fragments to the top. I believe 

 that at this place the depth of the glacier could not have been less than 

 4,000 feet, for there is such a steep grade from the present margin to the 

 tip of the Devil's Thumb that to have moved up this and reached the 

 tip, carrying fragments of slate derived from some point within the -ice 

 boundary, could hardly have been done by a glacier which merely 

 veneered the mountain's surface. There must have been distinct move- 

 ment, and that this was so is proved by the fact that, although extremely 

 rocky and angular on the sea or western face, the back or eastern side of 

 the Devil's Thumb shows distinct topographic signs of ice scouring. 

 Even granting no more than 3,000 feet, w T hich must be admitted, the ice- 

 sheet here was a thick one. 



Nearly the same amount of thickness must also be admitted for the 

 end of the peninsula, where transported fragments were found at an ele- 

 vation of 1,400 feet, while the fiord near it has a depth estimated to be 

 100 fathoms upon the basis of the size of the icebergs that float in its 

 waters. A depth of 114 fathoms was found within 2 or 3 miles of this 

 place, off the western side of Wilcox Head, in the direction of the Duck 

 islands. Here, then, in the immediate neighborhood of Wilcox Head, 

 the ice-sheet could not have been less than 2,000 feet in depth, and in 

 all probability was deeper than this. At the Duck islands, adding their 

 elevation of 100 feet to the water depth of at least 600 feet, it is necessary 

 to believe that an ice-sheet existed at this point, from 30 to 35 miles dis- 

 tant from the present glacier margin, with a depth of not less than 700 feet 

 and probably much more. 



Therefore the evidence on this part of the Greenland coast is that the 

 glacier of Greenland extended beyond the limit of the outermost land, 

 carrying materials whose place of origin is within the present ice-bound- 

 ary. In the places studied by various parties on the American side of 

 these waters it is found that ice has also covered this land. Our party 

 found that ice had covered the highest hills in Cumberland sound, on 

 Baffinland, and had reached out toward the sea into the waters which 

 separate Greenland and Baffinland. 



From the evidence at hand, no one is warranted in assuming the 

 junction of these two ice-sheets; but, on the other hand, it cannot now 

 be denied as a possibility. On the two sides of a sea 300 or 400 miles 



