The age-herald., 1898-01-16
From the Wi1dS
 West Greenland (

Washington Letter in the Boston Tran
 script.
 Two Smithsonian scientists, Charles Schu- chert and David White, have just returned from the wilds of West Greenland, bring ing back valuable collections. In region of everlasting ice and snow they have been exploring luxuriant tropical forests. far to the north of the Arctic circle they have been studying a fora consisting or palms, tree ferns and other plants belong ing properly to the neighborhood Of the equator. These forests, however, and the trees and varied forms of plant life which compose them are exceedingly ancient In fact, they disappeared from the face of the earth several millions of years ago. and only their fossil remains are found buried in the strata of the rocks. It was these remains that eMssrs. Schuchert ana White went to investigate. They wanted to get specimens for the National museum, and other objects of geological nature were in view
 Greenland was once upon time trop- teal country. That is proved absoluteiy by the remains of an extensive tropical flora which are found there. Where now a sheet of solid ice over a mile thick GOV CTS mountain and valley, and mighty froz- en rivers called glaciers make their way to the sea and hatch icebergs, there was in earlier days a verdure-ciad wilderness of luxuriant vegitation. Together with the palms and tree ferns, there were trees re- lated to the giant sequoias of our own west coast; also representatives of the "gingko, the sacred tree of Japan and of the Bu- calyptus family, which today is restricted to Australia. Climbing vines festooned the trunks of these monarch of an ancient for est with draperies of foliage, while close to the ground grew those curious dwarf trees called "cycads, somewhat resem- bling palms in miniature, in the midst Of tangled undergrowth of ferns and other flower1ess plants that carpeted the dense- ly wooded areas.
 Messrs Schuchert and White accom- panied the Peary expedition. just returned. They were bent on business of their own, however, and it had nothing to do with the exploring trip of the steamer Hope, on which they took passage The navy de- pertinent provided them with whaleboat 2S feet long, which was used by the United States steamship Yantic when she was in Arctic waters. The Hope landed them, with their boat, at Oomenak island, in the Oomenak fjord There was a great commotion among the natives, who, on this occasion behed steamship for the second time in their lives, the Hope having visited this locality the year before. It is far out of the track of whalers. on the west ern coast of Greenland. The inhabitants f1ocked out in kyaks, and bags of crackers being thrown overheard from the vessel, they had great fun racing for them.
 This colony of Greenlanders is nestled in a little fjord which, by an accide of stu- ation is protected from the glaciers which pour down from the great ice-cap of the isand-continent into the sea on every side. It is surrounded by mighty mountain peaks and the little harbor was crowded with icebergs when the Hope got there, though it was midsummer. -The governor of the settlement is named Kneutsen He is Dane, and is appointed by the government of Denmark. He has held the office twen- . ty-three years. the rule being that the governor of a Greenland colony shall re- main twenty five years and then go home on a pension. He does all the buying and selling for the natives, trading sealskins and other furs for clothing, wood coffee, sugar, fish hooks and other necessaries There are no trees in Greenland, and so the wood for boat building and other pur- poses must be imported.
 Gov. Kneutsen secured for the expedt- tion four Greenlanders. Most of these people have an admixture of Danish blood, and they do not like to be called Eskimo, which is a term bestowed originally in contempt, meaning "fish-eaters." sailor from the Hope also went along. They started out in the whaleboat on August 1O and landed on the Noursoak peninsula, which proved to be rich field in fossil
 
 first fossil plants gathering them up to an elevation of 1000 feet Thence they trav- eled along the coast southward, collect ing as they went, as far as Atanekerdluk, in the neighborhood of which they obtained the largest quantity of plant remains. One object in view was to find out if the species of plants were the same as those which occur in corresponding geological forma- tions in the United States.
 Another object was to study the marine nn,ata onan "a in are associated with these ancient plants. Of these large number were collected, including mussels, sea snails, sea urchins, ammonites and baculites. The ammonites and baculites were cephaloids related to the modern nautilus; no descendants of theirs are living at the present time Like the nautilus, they were built on the cut tlefish plan, with several arms; the bacul- ties occupied rod-shaped shells, while the shells of the ammonites were curled like rams horn. These fossils, relics of a vanished marine fauna were found in closed in nodules of stone, of which in many cases they were the nuclei. The nodules were extremely hard and difh- cult to break.
 The tropical plant beds were overlaid by a later formation in which it was hoped to find remains of whales and seals, but there was no trace of any animal life In this upper deposit, however, were masses of fossil plants in layers two or three
 
 seams of an impure kind of coal more properly called Ignite, which is mined by the Danish governors for their winter fuel. The natives burn turf and blubber. Some students from different colleges, who ac- companied the Hope exploring expedition more for sport than for anything else, landed in Baffin Land at Cape Haven, where there is an American trading station. They took two whaleboats and some na- lives, and made their way to the head of Frobisher bay. Incidentally they rediscov- cred Sillimans Fossil mound, which was so named by Capt. Hall the Arctic explorer. They secured seventy species of mollusks, corals, trilobites. etc. The trilobites were especially interesting, inasmuch as they were crustaceans of a type long ago ex- tinct the ancestors of modern Holsters and crabs. MT. Schuchert dug up several very old graves, which were merely heaps of rocks covered with thin slabs of sand stone They contained perfectly pre- served skeletons.
 The finding of the oldest hardwood plant yet known in the world was perhaps the most interesting discovery of the expedi-