THE ISLAND OF GREENLAND 25 
After a hot climb up the steep slopes that border 
the sea it is a welcome change to lie on the heath 
enjoying the cool breeze, the wonderful panorama 
of mountain, sea, and ice and to revel in the peace- 
ful solitude. 
From the granitic headlands of Cape Farewell, 
on the latitude of the southern extremity of the 
Shetland Islands, Greenland extends slightly be- 
yond lat. 83° N.; it is nearly 1700 miles long, a 
distance equal to that from the northern limit of 
the Shetland Islands to the north coast of Africa, 
and has an average breadth of about 600 miles, 
an area approximately four times that of France. 
On the north-west Greenland is separated from 
Grant Land, Grinnell Land, and Ellesmere Land 
by the narrow channels connecting Baffin Bay 
with the Polar Sea; so narrow are the channels 
that Eskimoes can easily pass across. It was doubt- 
less by this route that the ancestors of the present 
Greenlanders reached the country. With Europe 
Greenland is closely connected geologically. In 
the remote past, at least, there was probably a vast 
continent, a northern Atlantis, stretching from 
what are now the highlands of Norway and Scot- 
land to the Arctic regions of America. Greenland 
is in a geological as also in a biological sense a 
connecting link between the Old and the New 
World. By far the greater part of the island, so 
far as it is possible to ascertain the structure of a 
land almost completely covered by ice, consists of 
coarsely crystalline rocks mainly of igneous origin 
and of an antiquity that is inconceivably remote. 
