178 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[chap. IV. 
only after endless zigzag wanderings, at places where they have 
become filled with snow and thereby passable. In summer 
again, when the snow has melted, the surface of the ice- 
wilderness has quite a different appearance. The snow has 
disappeared and the ground is now formed of a blue ice, which 
however is not clean, but everywhere rendered dirty by 
GREENLAND ICE FJORD. 
After a design drawn and litliographed by a Greenland Eskimo 
a grey argillaceous dust, carried to the surface of the 
glacier by wind and rain, probably from distant mountain 
heights. Among this clay, and even directly on the ice itself, 
there is a scanty covering of low vegetable organisms. The 
ice-deserts of the Polar lands are thus the habitat of a peculiar 
flora, which, insignificant as it appears to be, forms however 
