GBEENHOW. 230 GREENLAND. published a nistory of Tripoli (1835), bu^ his <:liipf work was a History of Oregon and Cali- fornia (1S40). GREEN ISLAND. A village in Albany Coun- ty, N. Y., situated on an island in the Hudson Eiver, connected by bridges with Troy and 'ater- viiet (Map: New York; G 3). It has shops of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company's Railroad, railroad signal works, and important manufactures of laiit goods, iron, machinery, lumber, stoves, etc. The village owns and op- erates its electric-light plant. Population, in 1890, 4403; in 1900^' 4770. GREENLAND. The largest island in the world. Its area, not exactly determined, is about 512,000 square miles. The island is 1500 miles in length and. at its broadest part, 090 miles in width. In the extreme south it barely extends below the parallel of latitude 00° X. ; the north coast has not been entirely outlined, but Peary discovered that the most northern point of the islands that front this coast of Greenland is in 83° 39', the cairn he built there standing on the most northern kno
land. Forming the extreme
eastern portion of the American Arctic area, Greenland extends north and south between the Arctic and the Atlantic oceans. On the east it fronts the .rctic Ocean, and on the west it is separated from the American Arctic archipelago by the broad areas of Davis Strait and Baffin Bay. and farther north by the narrow waterways of Smith Sound. Kane Basin, and Kennedy and Robeson Channels. The outlines of Greenland could not satisfactorily be indicated till the surveys (1892-1900) of Peary on the northeast and north coasts, and of Nathorst and others on the east coast, had been completed. The coasts still unknown (1903) include the southern part of Melville Bay and portions of the northeast coast as far south as Cape Bismarck; but these unvisited shore-lines are too short materially to change the shape and size of the island as it now appears on the maps. All the coasts are bordered by hundreds of islands, most of them small, and are penetrated by deep and narrow fiords, many of them choked with glaciers descending to the sea from the inland ice. A large part of the west coast, par- ticularly in the south, has a belt of low shore lands, free from permanent ice and snow, about 100 miles in width in the district of Holstenborg, and 00 miles w ide in the district of Godthaab ; elsewhere on the west coast the lowland is much narrower. The east shore has the same phe- nomena of deeply dissected coasts and a low shore belt, which, however, is only G to 20 miles in width. All the inhabitants live on these low- lands near the sea. On many parts of the coasts there is no lowland, hut lofty mountains descend sheer to the sea. The characteristic features of Greenland are the deep fiords, the lofty moun- tains, grand and sombre, bordering the sea or separated from it by the low belt, and the great cap of the inland ice and its attendant phe- nomena of innumerable glaciers. The mountains terminate the Greenland plateau and the precipi- tous face they show to the sea is from 1500 to 3000 feet in height. Manv mount.Tins rise to 5000 or 8000 feet, and Pttermann Peak on the east coast to 11.000 feet. The wliole interior of the land, or more than three-fifths of the entire surface, is covered with an unbroken ice sheet, be- lieved to be from 2000 feet to a mile in thickness, comparatively level, its monotony relieved only near its outer edges by mountains (nunataks) rising above the ice surface. It was once sup- posed that the ice cap might surround depres- sions of ice-free land, but the journeys of Peary, who crossed the ice cap four times, and of Nan- sen, who crossed it once, dispelled this idea. Dr. Drygalski. of Germany, who has nuide a careful investigation both of the inland ice and of the glaciers of the west coast mountain tracts, be- lieves that the great ice cap had its origin in the mountains of the interior and coastal regions, descending from them at first in the form of separate glaciers which gradually coalesced and s.) filled the valleys and smothered height after height till the whole land disappeared. A constant outflow of ice takes place, the ice sheet moving from the interior where it is thickest to the marginal area where it is thin- nest. It is believed that the land surface of the interior is covered with mountains, as on the coast, but they are Imried under the ice cap. The highest point reached by Peary on the ice cap was mere than 8000 feet above sea-level. The glaciers move down the fiords to discharge at the sea-edge as icebergs, ilany of them, how- ever, never reach the sea, their rate of movement being so slow that the summer melting keeps their fronts miles inland. The glacial movement seaward varies greatlv along different parts of the coasts. It has been obsen'ed chiefly in South- west Greenland, where the rate of movement, as measured among a considerable numljer of gla- ciers, ranges from 2 feet an hour to 99 feet a day at the large glacier near Upernivik. The east coast glaciers are usually much smaller than those of the southwest coast, but Peary has ob- served in Inglefield Gulf, Northwest Greenland, glaciers that compare in volume with the mighty ice rivers of the southwest, which is the birth- place of most of the icebergs that cross the track of Atlantic steamers during the summer montlis. The climate is very cold, the mean annual isotherm of freezing temperature crossing the island near its southern end. This fact does not prevent the prevalence of warmth suitable for vegetation during the long summer day. in the interior of the fiords and in sheltered places ex- posed to the sun, nearly or quite to the northern end of the island. Thus the summer temperature in favored localities often reaches an important height. The mean temperature of the three sum- mer months at .Julianehaab, in South Greenland, is 48° F. ; at Upernivik. farther north, it is 38° F. The long, dark winters are bitterly cold, the average temperature in South Greenland ranging from — 7° to — 20° F., while in the north tem- peratures of — 60° to — 70° F. have been re- corded. .January is the coldest month in the southern part of Greenland, and February in the north. Tlie differences between the summer tem- peratures of the north and south are less than those between the winter temperatures. The east coast has a somewhat higher temperature than the west coast, April and August bring the larg- est precipitation, and the climate of the northern part of the island is drier than that of the south. From the rock exposures along the coastal belts, it is inferred that the most of Greenland is composed of Archaean formations, chiefly gneiss and other crystalline rocks. Along the middle parts of both the west and east coasts it is found
