ments.

Direct measurements of the velocity have now been applied on three first-rate and one second-rate fiords, all situated between 69° and 71° north latitude. The measurements have been repeated during the coldest and the warmest season, and connected with surveying and other investigations of the inlets and their environs. It is now proved that the glacier branches which produce the bergs proceed incessantly at a rate of thirty to fifty feet per diem, this movement being not at all influenced by the seasons.

...

In the ice-fiord of Jakobshavn, which spreads its enormous bergs over Disco Bay and probably far into the Atlantic, the productive part of the glacier is 4,500 metres (about 2 miles) broad. The movement along its middle line, which is quicker than on the sides nearer the shores, can be rated at fifty feet per diem. The bulk of ice here annually forced into the sea would, if taken on the shore, make a mountain two miles long, two miles broad, and 1,000 feet high. The ice-fiord of Torsukatak receives four or five branches of the glacier; the most productive of them is about 9,000 metres broad (five miles), and moves between sixteen and thirty-two feet per diem. The large Karajak Glacier, about 7,000 metres (four miles) broad, proceeds at a rate of from twenty-two to thirtyeight feet per diem. Finally, a glacier branch dipping into the fiord of Jtivdliarsuk, 5,800 metres broad (three miles), moved between twenty-four and forty-six feet per diem.*

The principal part of our information concerning the glaciers of Greenland north of Melville Bay was obtained by Drs. Kane and Hayes, in 1853 and 1854, while conducting an expedition in search of Sir John Franklin and his unfortunate crew. Dr. Hayes conducted another ex

* See Transactions of the Edinburgh Geological Society for February 18, 1886, vol. v, part ii, pp. 286-293.

pedition to the same desolate region in 1860, while other explorers have to some extent supplemented their observations. The largest glacier which they saw enters the sea between latitude 79° and 80°, where it presents a precipitous discharging front more than sixty miles in width and hundreds of feet in perpendicular height.

Dr. Kane gives his first impressions of this grand glacier in the following vivid description:

"I will not attempt to do better by florid description. Men only rhapsodize about Niagara and the ocean. My notes speak simply of the 'long, ever-shining line of cliff diminished to a well-pointed wedge in the perspective'; and, again, of the face of glistening ice, sweeping in a long curve from the low interior, the facets in front intensely illuminated by the sun.' But this line of cliff rose in a solid, glassy wall three hundred feet above the water-level, with an unknown, unfathomable depth below it; and its curved face, sixty miles in length from Cape Agassiz to Cape Forbes, vanished into unknown space at not more than a single day's railroad-travel from the pole. The interior, with which it communicated and from which it issued, was an unsurveyed mer de glace-an iceocean to the eye, of boundless dimensions.

"It was in full sight-the mighty crystal bridge which connects the two continents of America and Greenland. I say continents, for Greenland, however insulated it may ultimately prove to be, is in mass strictly continental. Its least possible axis, measured from Cape Farewell to the line of this glacier, in the neighbourhood of the eightieth parallel, gives a length of more than 1,200 miles, not materially less than that of Australia from its northern to its southern cape.

"Imagine, now, the centre of such a continent, occupied through nearly its whole extent by a deep, unbroken sea of ice that gathers perennial increase from the watershed of vast snow-covered mountains and all the precipi

tations of its atmosphere upon its own surface. Imagine this, moving onwards like a great glacial river, seeking outlets at every fiord and valley, rolling icy cataracts into the Atlantic and Greenland seas; and, having at last reached the northern limit of the land that has borne it up, pouring out a mighty frozen torrent into unknown arctic space!

"It is thus, and only thus, that we must form a just conception of a phenomenon like this great glacier. I had looked in my own mind for such an appearance, should I ever be fortunate enough to reach the northern coast of Greenland; but, now that it was before me, I could hardly realize it. I had recognized, in my quiet library at home, the beautiful analogies which Forbes and Studer have developed between the glacier and the river. But I could not comprehend at first this complete substitution of ice for water.

"It was slowly that the conviction dawned on me that I was looking upon the counterpart of the great riversystem of Arctic Asia and America. Yet here were no water-feeders from the south. Every particle of moisture had its origin within the polar circle and had been converted into ice. There were no vast alluvions, no forest or animal traces borne down by liquid torrents. Here was a plastic, moving, semi-solid mass, obliterating life, swallowing rocks and islands, and ploughing its way with irresistible march through the crust of an investing sea."*

Much less is known concerning the eastern coast of Greenland than about the western coast. For a long time it was supposed that there might be a considerable population in the lower latitudes along the eastern side. But that is now proved to be a mistake. The whole coast is very inhospitable and difficult of approach. From lati

*Arctic Explorations in the Years 1853, 1854, and 1855, vol. i, pp. 225-228.

tude 65° to latitude 69° little or nothing is known of it. In 1822-223 Scoresby, Cleavering, and Sabine hastily explored the coast from latitude 69° to 76°, and reported numerous glaciers descending to the sea-level through extensive fiords, from which immense icebergs float out and render navigation dangerous. In 1869 and 1870 the second North- German Expedition partly explored the coast between latitude 73° and 77°. Mr. Payer, an experienced Alpine explorer, who accompanied the expedition, reports the country as much broken, and the glaciers as "subordinated in position to the higher peaks, and having their moraines, both lateral and terminal, like those of the Alpine ranges, and on a still grander scale." Petermann Peak, in latitude 73°, is reported as 13,000 feet high. Captain Koldewey, chief of the expedition, found extensive plateaus on the mainland, in latitude 75°, to be "entirely clear of snow, although only sparsely covered with vegetation." The mountains in this vicinity, also, rising to a height of more than 2,000 feet, were free from snow in the summer. Some of the fiords in this vicinity penetrate the continent through several degrees of longitude.

An interesting episode of this expedition was the experience of the crew of the ship Hansa, which was caught in the ice and destroyed. The crew, however, escaped by encamping on the ice-floe which had crushed the ship. From this, as it slowly floated towards the south through several degrees of latitude, they had opportunity to make many important observations upon the continent itself. As viewed from this unique position the coast had the appearance everywhere of being precipitous, with mountains of considerable height rising in the background, from which numerous small glaciers descended to the sea-level.

In 1888 Dr. F. Nansen, with Lieutenant Sverdrup and four others, was left by a whaler on the ice-pack bordering the east of Greenland about latitude 65°, and in sight of the coast. For twelve days the party was on the ice

pack floating south, and so actually reached the coast only about latitude 64°. From this point they attempted to cross the inland ice in a northwesterly direction towards Christianshaab. They soon reached a height of 7,000 feet, and were compelled by severe northerly storms to diverge from their course, taking a direction more to the west. The greatest height attained was 9,500 feet, and the party arrived on the western coast at Ameralik Fiord, a little south of Godhaab, about the same latitude at which they entered.

It thus appears that subsequent investigations have confirmed in a remarkable manner the sagacious conclusions made by the eminent Scotch geologist and glacialist Robert Brown in 1875, soon after his own expedition to the country. "I look upon Greenland and its interior ice-field," he writes, "in the light of a broad-lipped, shallow vessel, but with chinks in the lips here and there, and the glacier like viscous matter in it. As more is poured in, the viscous matter will run over the edges, naturally taking the line of the chinks as its lineof outflow. The broad lips of the vessel are the outlyingislands or outskirts'; the viscous matter in the vessel the inland ice, the additional matter continually being poured in in the form of the enormous snow covering, which, winter after winter, for seven or eight months in the year, falls almost continuously on it; the chinks are the fiords or valleys down which the glaciers, representing the outflowing viscous matter, empty the surplus of the vessel-in other words, the ice floats out in glaciers, overflows the land in fact, down the valleys and fiords of Greenland by force of the superincumbent weight of snow, just as does the grain on the floor of a barn (as admirably described by Mr. Jamieson) when another sackful is emptied on the top of the mound already on the floor. The floor is flat, and therefore does not conduct the grain in any direction; the outward motion is due to the pressure