THE GLACIERS OF GREENLAND. 79 



proceeds at a rate of from twenty -two to thirty-eight feet 

 per diem. Finally,, a glacier branch dipping into the fiord of 

 Jtivdliarsuk, 5,800 metres (three miles) broad, moved between 

 twenty-four and forty-six feet per diem.* 



Describing the " Isblink," in latitude 62 J° north, Kink 



says : 



The whole surveyed area of the inland ice in this place is 

 calculated at 450 square miles, and forms, by means of the 

 tongued shape of its foremost part, in some measure a separate 

 district, in which the principal changes of the whole margin, 

 excepting the ice-fiords, are represented. Toward the interior 

 it is bordered by a row of nunataks,] distant about forty miles 

 from the seaward edge which our travelers had ascended as 

 their starting-point. Here the origin of the ice over which 

 they had passed was at once plainly visible ; namely, that it 

 could not have been formed on the spot, but was brought 

 thither from the interior of the continent. The nunataks 

 had been an obstacle to this movement ; on the east side, fac- 

 ing the interior, the ice was broken and piled up several hun- 

 dred feet against the rock, like breakers of an ocean, while to 

 the south and north, and between the nunataks, it poured 

 down like frozen waterfalls to be embodied in and leveled with 

 the crust over which our explorers had traveled. . . . 



The recent explorations, as already mentioned, have proved 

 that what now we designate as coast-land free from ice was for- 

 merly covered with ice like the interior. This ancient ice-cov- 

 ering reached, in the immediate vicinity of the present inland 

 ice, a height of 3,000 to 4,000 feet, and, farther seaward, 2,000 

 to 3,000 feet above the sea. All the usual traces of ancient 

 ice-action, the erratic blocks and the ground rocks, are the 

 same here as in northern Europe. 



* See "Transactions of the Edinburgh Geological Society" for February 18, 

 1886, vol. v, part ii, pp. 286-293. 



f Nunataks are simply mountain-tops projecting above the surface of the 

 ice-fields, such as were described in the account of the Muir Glacier in Alaska. 

 Nordenskiold was the first to describe them in Greenland, and gave them this 

 name. 



