CIL II] 
Ice and Icebergs 
9 
not be found either where there are perpendicular cliffs 
or low coast lines, but only along sloping high lands 
under special conditions. 
The most striking features in the polar landscape are 
the icebergs, and they are wholly derived from the land, 
the large icebergs from Greenland, from Spitsbergen 
much smaller ones. To understand their origin and 
movements we must turn to the great continental mass 
of Greenland. It consists of a vast ice-cap fringed by 
a strip of mountainous coast, which is penetrated by deep 
fjords and flanked by numerous off-lying rocks and islands. 
The area of Greenland is believed to be 512,000 square 
miles, of which 320,000 form the inland ice, and 192,000 
represent the fringing margin of mountains not per- 
manently ice-covered. The widest part is goo miles 
across; at Disco in 70 0 N. it is 480 miles and thence the 
two coasts converge until they meet in a point at Cape 
Farewell in 59 0 49' N. The length of Greenland is 1400 
miles. The Greenland ice-cap is by far the largest in 
the northern hemisphere — a continuous covering of snow, 
neve 1 , or ice resting on land, known as the " Inland Ice." 
From it descend glaciers or rivers of solid ice, coming from 
their sources in the ice-cap. 
The "Inland Ice" of Greenland rises to a height of 
8000 feet, and the deep fjords run for 80 or 100 miles 
before they end at the foot of walls of ice rising abruptly 
from the water. These walls are the terminations of 
glaciers from the inland ice, which, constantly throwing 
off icebergs, are called discharging glaciers. There are 
eight principal discharging glaciers on the west coast of 
Greenland 2 . On the Greenland continent the snow, con- 
verted into ice by pressure, has in the course of ages 
filled all the valleys, covered the mountain tops, and 
formed a smooth plateau far above them, so that the 
thickness of the inland ice is measured by thousands 
1 Neve is the upper portion of a glacier, the top layers of which are 
more nearly in the condition of snow, and in the whole of which much 
air is mingled with the ice. It is rather frozen snow than ice. 
2 Dr Rink gives a list of 25 discharging glaciers. Of these, beginning 
from the south, the principal ones are : 
(1) Sermilik (near Cape Farewell). (5) Jasiusak (into the Waigat). 
(2) Narsalik. (6) Omenak Fjord. 
(3) Godthaab. (7) Stor Kangerdlugsuatsiak. 
(4) Jacobshavn. (8) Upernivik. 
