Page:Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man.djvu/254

236 under the salt water, grating along the rocky bottom, which they must polish and score at depths of hundreds and even of more than a thousand 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 land 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 lat. 70º N., and of many peninsulas, with fiords from fifty to a hundred 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 4,000 feet to 5,000 feet high. The perpetual snow usually begins at the height of 2,000 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 phenogamous plants have been found at an elevation of 4,500 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 1,200 miles, the home of the Laplanders with their reindeer, bears, wolves, seals, walruses, and cetacea. If, therefore, there are geological grounds for