Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 26.djvu/926

 not see to the bottom of them, nor did the sounding- cord reach down except a short way. The depth of the ice-covering will of course vary ; when it lies over a valley it will be deeper, over a mountain-top less. All we know is, that just now it is almost level throughout, hill and dale making no difference. However, with such a huge superincumbent mass of ice, the average height of the coast- lying islands is greater than that of the inland ice, and it is only after climbing considerable heights that it can be seen 1. Therefore supposing this covering to be removed, I think the country would look like a huge shallow oblong vessel with high walls around it. The surface of the ice is ridged and furrowed after the manner of glaciers generally ; and this furrowing does not decrease as we go further inland ; on the contrary, as far as our limited means of observation go, it seems to increase ; so that even were it possible to cross this vast icy desert on dog-sledges when the snow is on the ground, I do not think it would be possible to return, and its exploration would require the aid of a ship on the other side. On its surface there appears not a trace of any living thing ; and after leaving the little outpouring offshoot of a glacier from it, the dreariness of the scene is not relieved by even the sight of a patch of earth, a stone, or aught belonging to the world we seem to have left behind. Once, and only once, during our attempt to explore this waste did I see a faint red streak, which showed the existence of the red snow plant (Protococcus nivalis) ; but even this was before the land had been fairly left. Animal life seems to have left the vicinity ; and the chilliness of the afternoon breeze, which regularly blew with piercing bitterness over the ice-wastes, even caused the Eskimo dogs to crouch under the lee of the sledge, and made us, their masters, draw the fur hoods of our coats higher about our ears 2. Whether this ice-field is continuous from north to south it is not possible in the present state of our knowledge to decide ; but most likely it is so. The American explorer Hayes 3 penetrated in upon it in Smith's Sound, with the same results that we did in mid Greenland and off Disco Bay, while Kielsen 4, Rink, and other Danish officers have seen it stretching continuously north and south from where they observed it in South Greenland; so that every fact seems to bear us out in our belief that no transverse ranges of mountains, or land of any extent, break the latitudinal stretch of this " inland ice." Whether its longitudinal range is continuous is more difficult to decide, though the same observers we have quoted saw nothing to the eastward to break their view ; so that, as I shall immediately discuss, there seems every probability that in Greenland there is one continuous unbroken level field of ice, swaddling up in its snowy winding-sheet hill and valley, without a

1 In Rink's ' Gronland,' ii. p. 2, are two characteristic views of the appearance of the interior ice seen from such elevations.

2 For description of the effects of the ice in limiting animal and vegetable life vide the author's "Mammalian Fauna of Greenland," Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond. 1868, p. 337; and "Florula Discoana," Trans. Bot. Soc. Edin. vol. ix. p. 440.

3 ' Open Polar Sea.'

4 Rink's ' Gronland Geographisk og Statistisk,' part iii. (vol. ii.) pp. 97-99.