32 A SUMMER IN GREENLAND 
Artocarpus, which is now exclusively an Old World 
genus, are recorded also from North American 
rocks. 
Seen from the sea, the coast of Greenland forms 
a long line of mountains often reaching a height 
of 3000-4000 ft.; the darker blue of the nearer 
hills shading gradually up the deep and tortuous 
fjords into the lighter tones of those farther inland. 
Off many parts of the coast lie scattered groups 
of islands, or skerries, like huge round-backed 
whales, the ice-worn summits of a submerged 
mountain-range. 
Over the whole of the interior is the ‘dead storm- 
lashed desert of ice’ rising in the central regions 
to a height of 8000—10,000 ft., its surface thrown 
into gentle undulations and the monotony occa- 
sionally broken by a stream that plunges with a 
roar into a chasm of unknown depth. Fridtjof 
Nansen, who in 1888 was the first to cross Green- 
land, compared the inland ice to the gently sloping 
surface of a shield many hundreds or even thou- 
sands of feet in thickness. As the sloping sides of 
the ice-shield approach the edge of the plateau 
crevasses are of frequent occurrence, and here and 
there a few of the higher peaks of the buried high- 
lands, with groups of the more hardy Arctic plants 
adhering to their rocks, stand as lonely sentinels 
on a limitless field of snow and ice. From the 
inland ice glaciers, like huge tentacles, are thrust 
outwards towards the sea, far surpassing in the 
rate of movement the glaciers of the Alps, and as 
the ice reaches water deep enough to buoy up the 
