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.
