62 A SUMMER IN GREENLAND 
growing horizontally not many inches under- 
ground. Size is a misleading criterion of age: the 
wood of a Willow stem barely an inch in diameter 
may show as many as 100 attenuated annual rings. 
In the districts we visited, Willows, including the 
British species, Sax herbacea (the smallest tree in 
the British Isles), and a few other species with 
many hybrids, and the Dwarf Birch are the only 
trees. The tallest examples growing in sheltered 
places or against the sides of rocks reached a height 
of two to three feet; for the most part they lie 
prone on the ground with no main stem, but with 
spreading and often twisted shoots in which the 
annual increase in length is very small. They have 
water enough and in the summer abundant ‘com- 
fort of the sun,’ but they are unable with impunity 
to grow far above the ground-level. Arctic plants 
point the moral of the wise words of a seventeenth 
century divine. ‘The best means to preserve peace 
is in humbleness. The tall cedars feel the fury of 
the tempest which blows over the humble shrubs 
in the low valley.’ 
In South Greenland, on the other hand, trees 
are more abundant and, though usually much 
lower, in rare instances they reach a height of 
about eighteen feet. In addition to Willows and 
Birches there are Junipers, Alders, and the American 
Sorb (Sorbus americana). 
Landing on a beach where glacial streams have 
built up a fan-shaped delta sloping seawards in a 
graceful curve from the mouth of a ravine cut by 
successive spring floods through the rocks of the 
