HKB
and there steep mountains protrude abruptly from the icy slope, and a few superficial lines of stones or moraines are visible at seasons when no recent snow has fallen. [23]
Although all the ice is moving seaward, the greatest quantity is discharged at the heads of certain large fjords, usually about 4 miles wide, which, if the climate were milder, would be the outlet of as many great rivers. Through these the ice is now protruded in huge blocks, several miles wide, and from 1000 to 1500 feet in height or thickness. When these masses reach the fjords, they do not melt or break up into fragments, but continue their course in a solid form in the salt water, grating along the rocky bottom, which they must polish and score at depths of hundreds and even of more than 1000 feet. At length, when there is water enough to float them, huge portions, having broken off, fill Baffin's Bay with icebergs of a size exceeding any which could be produced by ordinary valley glaciers. Stones, sand, and mud are sometimes included in these bergs which float down Baffin's Bay. At some points, where the ice of the interior of Greenland reaches the coast, Dr. Rink saw mighty springs of clayey water issuing from under the edge of the ice even in winter, showing the grinding action of the glacial mass mixed with sand on the subjacent surface of the rocks.
The "outskirts," where the Danish colonies are stationed, consist of numerous islands, of which Disco island is the largest in latitude 70 degrees north, and of many peninsulas, with fjords from 50 to 100 miles long, running into the land, and through which the ice above alluded to passes on its way to the bay. This area is 30, 000 square miles in extent, and contains in it some mountains 4000 feet to 5000 feet high. The perpetual snow usually begins at the height of 2000 feet, below which level the land is for the most part free from snow between June and August, and supports a vegetation of several hundred species of flowering plants, which ripen their seeds before the winter. There are even some places where phanerogamous plants have been found at an elevation of 4500 feet; a fact which, when we reflect on the immediate vicinity of so large and lofty a region of continental ice in the same latitude, well deserves the attention of the geologist, who should also bear in mind, that while the Danes are settled to the west in the "outskirts," there exists, due east of the most southern portion of this ice-covered continent, at the distance of about 1200 miles, the home of the Laplanders with their reindeer, bears, wolves, seals, walruses, and whales. If, therefore, there are geological grounds for suspecting that Scandinavia or Scotland or Wales was ever in the same glacial condition as Greenland now is, we must not imagine that the contemporaneous fauna and flora were everywhere poor and stunted, or that they may not, especially at the distance of a few hundred miles in a SOUTHWARD direction, have been very luxuriant. [24]
Another series of observations made by Captain Graah, during a survey of Greenland between 1823 and 1829, and by Dr. Pingel in 1830-32, adds not a little to the geological interest of the "outskirts," in their bearing on glacial phenomena of ancient date. Those Danish investigators, with one of whom, Dr. Pingel, I conversed at Copenhagen in 1834, ascertained that the whole coast from latitude 60 to about 70 degrees north has been subsiding for the last four centuries, so that some ancient piles driven into the beach to support the boats of the settlers have been gradually submerged, and wooden buildings have had to be repeatedly shifted farther inland.*
(* "Principles of Geology" chapter 30.)