Description

Till recently Hooker, Payer, and others supposed that the interior of Greenland presented vast spaces free of ice, grassy valleys where herds of reindeer grazed, and popular legends were appealed to in support of this view. Nordenskjöld also suggested that the phenomenon might be explained by the action of the winds, which after crossing the inland ranges descended in warm currents like the föhn of Switzerland, and thus melted the snows of the valleys. But the systematic researches made in recent years have failed to discover any of these inland oases. The whole land appears, on the contrary, to be covered with a continuous ice-cap fringed by glaciers which move down the outer valleys to the neighborhood of the sea, or to the fiords of the periphery. The valleys themselves have disappeared, and, despite local irregularities, the ice-cap slopes like a shield uniformly toward the interior. Thus, in certain places the explorer should expect to meet elevations of seven thousand or eight thousand feet; but, owing to an optical illusion, he scarcely knows whether he is climbing or descending. The horizon seems to rise on all sides, says Nordenskjöld, "as if he were at the bottom of a basin."