32 Thickness of the Antarctic Ice , and its [January, 
Dr. Rink, referring to the inland ice, says that the eleva- 
tion or height above the sea of this icy plain, at its junction 
with the outskirts of the country, and where it begins to 
lower itself through the valleys to the friths, is, in the rami- 
fications of the Bay of Omenak, found to be 2000 feet, from 
which level it gradually rises towards the interior .* 
Dr. Robert Brown is of opinion that Greenland is not tra- 
versed by any range of mountains or high land, but that the 
entire continent, 1200 miles in length and 400 miles in 
breadth, is covered with one continuous unbroken field of 
ice, the upper surface of which, he says, rises by a gentle slope 
towards the interior, t 
Lieut. Jensen and his party, after great toil, succeeded in 
reaching a mountain 50 miles from the border of the ice- 
fields. The height of the mountain which they ascended 
was ascertained to be about 5000 feet above-sea-level. From 
the summit they found the ice-fields beyond stretching as far 
as the eye could see, the plateau apparently rising higher and 
higher towards the interior. 
There is little doubt that an expedition into the interior of 
Greenland would throw more light on the physical nature of 
continental ice than one to the North Pole. 
The Ice of the Glacial Epoch. — The same general principles 
whi;h we have been considering hold equally true in reference 
to the ice of the Glacial epoch. Misapprehensions regarding 
the magnitude of continental ice lie at the very root of the 
opposition with which the Land-ice Theory of the chief 
phenomena of the Glacial Epoch has had to contend. One 
of the main objections urged against that theory is the 
magnitude of the ice-sheet which it demands. For example, 
to explain the glacial phenomena by the theory of land ice, 
we are compelled to infer that the whole of Scotland, 
Scandinavia, and the greater part of North-western Europe, 
were not only covered with ice, but covered to a depth of 
one or two thousand feet. But not only are the mainlands 
glaciated, but the islands of the Baltic, the Orkneys, the 
Shetlands, and the Hebrides, bear equal evidence of ice 
having passed over them. To explain this by the theory, 
we have further to assume that the ice-sheet which covered 
the land must have filled the Baltic, the German Ocean, and 
the surrounding seas ; in short, that all these regions were 
buried underneath one continuous mass of ice. 
To one with inadequate conceptions of the nature of con- 
* Journal of the. Royal Geographical Society, 1853, vol. xxiii. 
f * Physics of Ardtic Ice,” Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. for February, 1871. 
