The Mineral Resources of Greenland. 7 
Mining operations are severely handicapped by local conditions. 
Everything except fish and a small amount of game must be brought 
from Europe and the freight rate is about $ 9.00 (36 Kroner) per ton. 
There is no communication with Europe for at least four months in 
the year, and even in summer it may be most irregular. As no cable or 
wireless exists between Greenland and Europe, mining operations must 
be carried on with infrequent and tardy advice from the home office. 
The climate is unfavorable, and even in southern Greenland the 
mean annual temperature is but 33° F. (0.6° C.). 
‚АП labor is imported, since the 13 000 Eskimo inhabitants (Figure 5) 
are hunters and fishermen, and wholly unsuited, both by training and 
temperament, for mining. Nor are the natives permitted by the paternal 
colonial government to be employed in mines except the colonial coal 
mine. Danes, excellent quarrymen, are paid at Ivigtut 8 Kroner ($ 2.00) 
a day, food and lodging being furnished, although Norwegian and Swedish 
miners employed underground in other mines get from $ 1.90 to $ 2.70. 
The absence of well concentrated gravels, and the fact that float 
may have been transported by glaciers many miles and may even have 
originated from some place now covered by the inland ice, are factors 
adverse to prospecting. On the other hand, lode prospecting is facilitated 
by the relatively large areas of bare rock, аз soil and vegetation cover 
but a small proportion of the surface. Exposures are particularly clean 
between high and low water marks and, owing to the extremely serrate 
shore line, sections of much of the country are laid bare. 
Geolosy and ore deposits. 
The greater portion of the west coast of Greenland is made up of 
ancient rocks, presumably of pre-Cambrian age (Figure 6). These 
consist, in the order of their age, of interbedded mica and graphitic 
schists and limestone, hornblende gneiss, (mashed diorite and probably, 
in part, andesite) granite gneiss, amphibolite, (mashed diabase) cry- 
stalline limestone, dunite, granite and pegmatite. The schists and lime- 
stones cover small areas, and in consequence the country rocks are 
mostly igneous among which granite gneiss largely predominates. In- 
trusive in these rocks, in part probably of Paleozoic or Mesozoic, and 
in part possibly even of Tertiary age, are dark dikes, largely diabases, 
but, in one instance, biotite-syenite-porphyry. In two regions relatively 
young sedimentary rocks occur; the more southerly of these, to. the 
northeast of Julianehaab, consists of flat-lying red sandstones, which 
are supposed to be of Devonian age. This sandstone is intruded by a 
series of petrographically interesting soda-rich syenites and granites. 
From Disco Island north to 72°30’ N. latitude, the predominant rocks 
