144 TRANSPORTATION OF DRIFT BY ICEBERGS. [Ch. XI 



once descended through existing valleys. Many of the markings re- 

 ferred to deviate from the direction which they ought to follow if they 

 had been connected with the present line of drainage, and they, there- 

 fore, imply the prevalence of a very distinct condition of things at 

 the time when the cold was most intense. The actual state of the 

 Continent of North Greenland seems to afford the best explanation of 

 such abnormal glacial markings. 



Of that country a faithful d.escription has been given to us by Rink, 

 now governor of the Danish Settlements in Baffin's Bay, who has, 

 more than any other scientific traveller, explored both the coast and 

 the interior.* The land, he says, may be divided into two regions — 

 the inland and the outskirts. The inland is 800 miles from west to 

 east, and of much greater length from north to south. It is a vast 

 unexplored continent, buried under one continuous and colossal mass 

 of ice that is always moving seaward, a very small part of it in an 

 easterly direction, and all the rest westward, or toward Baffin's Bay. 

 All the minor ridges and valleys are levelled and concealed under a 

 general covering of snow, but here and there some steep mountains 

 protrude abruptly from the icy slope, and a few superficial lines of stones 

 or moraines are visible at certain seasons, when no snow has fallen for 

 many months, and when evaporation, promoted by the wind and sun, 

 has caused much of the upper snow to disappear. After penetrating 

 a great distance eastward in lat. 72° N., Rink still saw lines of these 

 stones in the extreme distance, indicating, he says, the existence of 

 precipitous mountains, piercing through the snow still farther east. 

 The height of this continent is unknown, but it must be very great, 

 as the most elevated lands of the outskirts which are described as com- 

 paratively low, attain altitudes of 4000 and 6000 feet. The icy slope 

 gradually lowers itself toward the outskirts, and then terminates 

 abruptly in a mass about 2000 feet in thickness, the great discharge of 

 ice taking place through certain large friths which, at their upper ends, 

 are usually about four miles across. Down these friths the ice is pro- 

 truded in huge masses, several miles wide, which continue their course 

 — grating along the rocky bottom like ordinary glaciers long after 

 they have reached the salt water. When at last they arrive at parts 

 of Baffin's Bay deep enough to buoy up icebergs from 1000 to 1500 

 feet in vertical thickness, broken masses of them float off, carrying 

 with them on their surface not only fine mud and sand but large 

 stones. These fragments of rock, as I am informed by Dr. Otto Torell, 

 who has examined many of the bergs after they had run aground, are 

 often polished and scored on one or more sides, and as the ice melts, 

 they drop down to the bottom of the sea, where large quantities of 

 mud are deposited, and this muddy bottom is inhabited by many 

 mollusca. 



* Rink, Journal of Royal Geograph. Soc, vol. xxiii. p. 145, and Lyell, Antiquity 

 of Man, p. 235. 



