APPENDIX A. 
GEO|.ogy; 
r^r¥i 
Prof. T. Chamberlin. 
Typography of Greenland. 
On our first approach to the coast of Greenland at Cape Deso- 
lation the rugose aspect of the coastal mountains arrested atten- 
tion. The angularity of their sky-lines at once impressed itself, 
as well as the marked ruggedness of the whole topographic ex- 
pression. Flowing contours were scarcely discernible in the gen- 
eral view. Here and there they might be found by search among 
the lower contours, but they contributed little to the general ex- 
pression. In addition to the asperity of the profiles, it was ob- 
served that the dominant lines of sculpture lay in vertical planes. 
It was quite obvious that their fashioning was due to the familiar 
meteoric agencies that work vertically. These features would not 
have been remarkable on almost any other coast, but here they 
possessed special significance. It has been the view of some ge- 
ologists that the former glaciation of the American mainland, 
which covered some three million square miles and reached 
southward approximately to the Ohio and Missouri Rivers, was 
but an extension of the present ice-cap of Greenland. If this 
were so, the interior ice of Greenland must once have pushed out 
to the coast across the border mountains and thence onward 
some 2000 or more miles. Such an extension would obviously 
have resulted in much horizontal rasping of the border mountains 
as the ice pushed across them. The unsubdued angularity they 
presented appeared to signify either that this hypothesis is en- 
*For permission to reproduce the accompanying illustrations, the author 
acknowledges his indebtedness to the editor of the “Bulletin Of the Geo- 
logical Society of America.” 
