674 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [June 22, 
self. It is on these islands, or outskirting land, that the population of 
Greenland lives, and the Danish trading-posts are built—all the rest 
of the country, with the exception of this island circlet, being an icy, 
landless, sea-like waste of glacier, which can be seen here and there 
peeping out in the distance. On some of the large and more moun- 
tuinons islands, as might be expected in such a climate, there are 
small independent glaciers, in many cases coming down to the sea, 
and there discharging icebergs; but these glaciers are of little im- 
portance and have no connexion with the great internal ice-cover- 
ing of the country. I have called the land circling this interior ice- 
desert “‘a collection of islands,’ because, though many of them are 
joined together by glaciers, and only a few are wholly insulated by 
water, many of them (indeed, the majority) are bounded on their 
eastern side by this internal inland ice; yet, whether bounded by 
water or by ice, the boundary is perpetual, and whatever be the 
insulating medium, they are to all intents and purposes islands. 
1. The interior Ice-field_—This is well known to the Danes in Green- 
land by the name of the “‘ inlands iis;” and though a familiar subject 
of talk amongst them from the earliest times’, it is only a very few 
of the ‘“ colonists” who have ever reached it. The natives every- 
where have a great horror of penetrating into the interior, not only 
on account of the dangers of ice-travel, but from a superstitious 
notion that the interior is inhabited by evil spirits in the shape of all 
sorts of monsters. 
Crossing over the comparatively narrow strip of land, the traveller 
comes to this great inland ice (fig. 1,q@). If the termination of it is 
at the sea, its face looks like a great ice wall: indeed the Eskimo call 
it the Sermik soak, which means this exactly. The height of this 
icy face varies according to the depth of the valley or fjord which it 
fills. If the valley is shallow the height is low, if, on the contrary, 
it is a deep glen, then the sea-face of the glacier in the fjord is lofty. 
From one thousand to three thousand feet is not uncommon. In 
such situations the face is always steep, because bergs are continually 
breaking off from it; and in such situations it is not only dangerous 
to approach it, on account of the ice falling, or the wave caused by 
tne displacement of the water, but from the great steepness of the 
face it is rarely possible to get on to it in such situations*. In such 
places Dr. Rink has generally found that it rises by successive ter- 
races to the general level plateau beyond®. However, where it does 
not reach the sea, it is often possible to climb on it from the land by 
a gentle slope, or even in some cases to step up on it as it shelves 
up. Once fairly on the inland ice, a dreary scene meets the view. 
Far as the eye can reach, to the north and to the south is this same 
great ice-field, the only thing to relieve the eye being the wind- 
' “ Tnterioribus ob plagam glacialem continuam inhabitabilibus.” Fabricius, 
Fauna Grenlandica, 1780. 
* The “ great. glacier” of Humboldt is merely such an exposed glacier-face, 
though of great extent. 
* Kane calls this the ‘“‘ escaladed structure” of the Greenland glacier. ‘ Arctic 
Explorations’ (American ed.), vol. ii. p. 284. 
