Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1883-07-07
The Interior Of Greenland.

Doror ,Nordenskjold is now fairly ON
srsv to Greenland, for the expfora-
hls wy 10th coasts and the interior ofthat
tlonJa continent. His programme is
l s;ren at length in Nature. The follow
glse axtracts contain his hypothesis as to
me eThe geological nature of Greenland,
.,;iar 70 that of Scandinavia, seems to
e ell;nate a similar geographical forma-
lnu0 viz. a formation formed of noun
,N;no,s ridges alternating with deep
's s, ! and plains; while one may even
v Vsa',me that the eliminating line of the
ssndii in Greenland runs, as in England
lnS sweden and in both American con
sna along the west coast. The
n;nds, therefore, which should produce
N 1nw in the interior, must, if from
so Atlantic, have in the first instance
used the broad ice-belt generally en-
I;sol;np the east coast of Greenland, and
.han the mountains on the coast, some of
..h;ch we know r very high, and, if
coming from Davis Sound, the noun
tsin rid ge itself. In both cases the wind
snrld assume the character of the
,rohn, wind, i. e., it must, after passing
.ho mountain-chains on the coasts, be drv
and comparatively War'm.
.tThcse causes are not only the reason
If the dry warm 'Fohn' winds in Switzer-
land. and the very remarkable circum-
stance that it is under winds from the
snow-covered mountains that the snow
disappears in Swedish Lapland, but they
NAV also an important part in the eli
matte conditions of the whole globe.
They are, for example, the cause Of the
difference in climate and flora of the two
sides of the Andes, of the east and west
coasts of TERRA del Fuego, and the east
ern and western parts of Australia.
They are the chief cause of the deserts
which cover the interiors of Asia, Aus
tralia, the northern portion of Africa,
and certain parts of America, while in
Sweden they produce the constant west
.n winds, and the constant prolonged
drought which invariably occurs in
!pring time in the central part of the
,ountry. The same laws of the temper
ature and moisture of the air must also
prevail in Greenland. Here too the
ocean winds must be moist, and this
moisture is usually deposited in the form
Of snow on the mountains along the
coast, whereas all those reaching the in
;erior, whether from east, west, north
m south, must-if the geographical con-
%struction of the country is not entirely
different from that of others on the globe
be dry and comparatively warm. And
IN consequence of this circumstance, the
now-falls in the interior of Greenland
.annot be sufficient for maintaining q
perpetual inland ice.
ut cannot, however, be asserted that
The country should here form a deserted,
;reeless tundra; one encounters in ST.
IBERIA forests with giant trees under eli
matte conditions far more severe than
those We may assume are to be found in
the interior of Greenland. That the
country should prove true to it's name
has besides been asserted by the cele-
bated botanist Hooker, from his studies
Of the flora of Greenland, and even the
natives on the west coast themselves
have a suspicion that such is the case,
from the large herds of reindeer that
from time to time r seen to migrate
Yross the inland ice to the west coast.
is most probable that the interior, if
free from ice, is like a North European
high plateau, with a fora far more CO
pious than that of the coast. But this
maintain, that whether the interior of
Greenland is richly covered with forests
as the land round the frigid pole of Sibe-
ria, or is a treeless, ice-free tundra, or
even a desert of perpetual ice, the solu-
ton OF the problem of its real nature is
soimportant, and of such consequence to
science, that there could hardly, at the
present moment, be conceived an object
more worthy of an Arctic expedition
than to ascertain the true conditions of
the interior of this particular country"