CHAPTER XIV

GREENLAND

The history of Greenland really begins about the year 986 A. D., when Eric the Red, a chieftain who had been banished from Iceland, landed on the island with some of his followers and made it his permanent residence. At different times these hardy and daring seamen made expeditions to the eastern coast of North America, and sailed as far south as Chesapeake Bay. They attempted to found a colony on the east coast at a point thought to be on the coast of New Jersey but, after contending with the savages for some time, deemed it best to abandon the project and to return to their Greenland home. The location at which they attempted their colony is by no means certain.

Stone igloos on the bleak coast of Greenland
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All this island, a half million square miles in area, except a small part of the southern coast line and a larger area in the north, is covered by an immense glacier. And this field of ice, like a huge piece of plastic wax, is constantly moving from the interior down toward the sea. As it approaches the ocean it divides into branches which flow down the numerous fiords and valleys into the sea. As the fronts of the branch glaciers are pushed out into the water their ends are broken off by the buoyancy of the water. These glacial-born masses then float away as icebergs, carrying with them on their southward journeys the rock waste—moraine detritus it is called—gathered by the parent glaciers.

When these floating leviathans are off the coast of Newfoundland, they encounter the waters of the Gulf Stream, melt, and scatter their débris of stony matter over a large area of the ocean bed. This process, having gone on for thousands of years, has shoaled the ocean in certain parts, forming the so-called Banks of Newfoundland.

A gelatinous slime filled with minute animal life forms on the bottom of the ocean in the arctic; the cold currents flowing south carry some of it along with them, and much of it is lodged on the stony bottoms of these banks. Fish, especially the cod, are fond of this gelatinous substance, and throng thither at certain seasons of the year in countless numbers to feed upon it.

One ignorant of the currents of the ocean might be puzzled at times in observing that an iceberg floats southward at the same time that pieces of wood are floating northward, both apparently acted upon by the same current. This may be explained by recalling that warm water is lighter than cold and hence is found as the upper layer when a cold and a warm current are flowing in different directions, one upon the other. It should be borne in mind that seven-eighths of the floating iceberg is under water, leaving but one-eighth above the surface. The Gulf Stream drift spreads out as it travels northward, and, being much shallower than the arctic currents, carries floating objects northward on the surface, while the deeper and more powerful arctic currents force the huge masses of ice southward.