88 A SUMMER IN GREENLAND 
separated from the infinitely more ancient rocks 
of which the greater part of the island is composed 
by a valley occupied by a fairly large glacier (Fig. 
41), on the flanks of which there are accumulated 
masses of lateral moraines. The present snout of 
the glacier is separated from the sea by a few 
hundred yards of sloping ground formed by the 
terminal moraine; but within the memory of living 
man, so we were told, the ice reached the sea. 
Near the glacier is a sandy beach where clumps of 
Willow, the blue-green leaves and flowering stalks 
of Elymus, a common dune-forming grass on the 
coasts of Europe, and spreading colonies of the 
succulent foliage-shoots of the Sea Purslane (4ren- 
aria peploides) formed the nuclei of miniature sand 
dunes. An occasional Snow Bunting, inquisitive 
Gulls, a few brown Butterflies, and swarms of 
ageressive Mosquitoes kept me company as I lay 
on the sand looking across the fjord at the hills of 
the Nigssuaq Peninsula, stretching to the west, and 
in front of them, towards the eastern end, the 
conical Umanak cliff (Fig. 14; the hill in line with 
the bowsprit of the motor-boat), in shape recalling 
the Matterhorn. When we afterwards gained a 
nearer view of this rock, its dignified isolation 
made a deep impression on my mind: it rises 
almost sheer from the sea, a wall of crystalline 
igneous rock nearly 4000 ft. high (Fig. 42). The 
salmon-pink mass is cut across half way up the 
precipice by a thin black band bent on itself like 
an S lying on its side (Fig. 43), an eloquent witness 
to the intensity of the forces which folded and 
