Arizona silver belt., 1889-09-14
ACROSS GREENLAND.
The Thrilling Story of a Danish Explorers
 Snow-Shoe Trip.

The Thrilling Story of Danish Explorers
 Snow-Shoe Trip.
 Since h.. Nansen's return to Dem mark he has added very interesting details to the story of his trip across Greenland. The fact that his party, after leaving the ship within twelve miles of Umivik, where they expected to begin their land journey, drifted many miles south in the ice and were over three weeks reaching their desti- nation on the coast, shows the im- -mense difficulty of penetrating the ice barrier that the prevailing winds keep constantly packed against the eastern shores of Greenland.
 Some of the isolated natives unac- customed to the sight of white men, fed in terror, though Captain Holm's solourn among them during one winter should have taught them better Probably no tribe were so thoroughly introduced to the public by means Of the camera as these natives of whom numerous photographs appear in Cap tain Holm's recent book.
 The six men of the Nansen expedi- 6on were a spectacle worth seeing as they gained the lofty summit of the in- land ice. all tied together with rope, as though they were climbing the Mat terhorn. It was wise precaution. for the snow concealed not a few gaping crevicesiu the thick ice, an6~1Uw and then the fragile. bridge gave way un- der some member of the party. It was heavy sledging in the soft snow of the Arctic summer, but the party, on their snow-shoes, dragging five little sledges, made fifty miles in the first twelve days. They were steadily climbing toward the summit of Green lands ice plain, which, as we have learned within the past few years, is higher. than any other extensive pla- teau in the world except those of the Pamir and some parts of Thibet
 The party occupied over two weeks in crossing this almost level ex- panse of ice, 5000 feet above the sea. It was now September, and at the enormous height of nearly 5000 feet above the summit of our Mount Wash hgton, it is easy to understand that the Greenland tourists were impeded no longer by soft and yielding snow. The temperature, however, was sell dom lower than twenty degrees below zero, but many snow storms and great drifts impeded the progress of the travellers.
 At last they reached the eastern slope of the frozen sea, and, hoisting their sails, they found that much of the time it was no longer necessary to haul on the sledge ropes. Often they travelled behind their sledges to hold them back and rattled down the long slope at a splendid rate. Now and then, however, they were face to face with the most startling dangers, as once, when they paused on the edge of a great crevice which seemed like the mouth of a bottomless abyss. They had other hairbreadth escapes, and once nearly lost their lives through the breaking of snow-bridge. Earlier travellers on the inland ice of Greenland have found that the need of making long detours to get around crevices was one of the greatest ob- stacles in their way.
 At last the fiords of the western coast were reached In forty days the little party had travelled three hundred miles, from sea to sea. We do not yet know what scientific value attaches to this expedition; but it is likely to add interesting facts to our knowledge of this stupendous ice mass, which, nov ing very slowly toward the coasts, finds some outlet for it's accumulations through the fiords. Contemplating this tremendous ice movement, it is not difficult to believe that we see in the Greenland of to-day the conditions that, in a past geological age, tore great powders of trap from the Pali- sades, and huge granite and other rock masses from far northern regions, and strewed them along the shores of Long Island '. Sun.