API 1 - N*,VHr.] STRUCTURE OE GREENLAND. 467 
No. VIII. 
REMARKS on the Structure of Greenland, 
in support of the opinion of its being an assem¬ 
blage of Islands, and not a Continent. By Sir 
Charles Giesecke' *. 
It is past doubt, that the whole coast of Greenland 
formerly consisted of large islands, which are now, as it 
were, glued together by immense masses of ice. 
Such inlets, or rather firths (fiords), which once formed 
sounds or passages, terminate always, according to my ob¬ 
servations, with glaciers filling up the valleys at each end. 
Such is (to confine myself to the more northern latitudes), 
the ice-firth, or ice-bay, of Disco Bay, in 68° 40'. Such, al¬ 
so, is Cornelius Bay (North-east Bay, or Omenak’s Fiord), 
71 J°, the north-eastern arm of which is blocked up at both 
ends with ice running through a valley, and bending ra¬ 
ther towards the ENE. 
It is only by this arm of the bay that we can suppose 
an ancient communication with the eastern coast, as its 
* This important article was received from Sir Charles Giesecke, in a 
letter to the author, dated 13th of February 1823. It ought to have been 
embodied in Chapter XII. at page 329., but did not arrive in time. By the 
same communication, Sir Charles very politely granted me the use of his 
interesting original chart in MS. of the cast side of Batlin’s Bay and Davis 
Straits, a part of which being of great consequence for the illustration of the 
opinion respecting the structure of this country given in Chapter XII., is 
included in the Comparative Map, Plate VIII. 
