rce the
huge masses of ice southward.

When the warm air over the Gulf Stream comes in contact with the
floating ice it is chilled, and the moisture which it holds is condensed
into fog. The fogs in turn, which are off the Newfoundland coast, being
in the line of steamship communication between Europe and America, are a
constant menace to navigation. The near presence of ice is usually
detected by a greater chilliness in the air. In order to avoid
collisions with one another, and also with icebergs, a ship constantly
sounds its sirens and fog horns as warnings while in the fog belt. The
signal of another steamship is a warning of the one; the answering echo
announces the nearness of the other.

[Illustration: A large iceberg]

The high interior of Greenland, about ten thousand feet in altitude, is
thought to result largely from the accumulation of ages of snow and ice,
only a part of which melts or moves oceanward to form glaciers. No other
part of the world is such an absolute desert as the greater part of this
island. Animal and vegetable life are wholly absent.

The colony which was planted in Greenland by Eric the Red, and
subsequently augmented by other Norsemen, continued to prosper for four
hundred years. At the end of that period there were about two hundred
villages, twelve parishes, and two monasteries. These, however,
disappeared. The hostility of the Eskimos in part accounts for their
extinction, but an encroachment of ice from the north, which encompassed
the southern part of the island, is thought to have been also a factor.
The fact that foreign trade with Greenland was forbidden by the mother
country may account in part for the gradual disappearance of the colony.
At all events, intercourse with Europe seems to have been cut off. This
condition continued for upward of two centuries, and when intercourse
with the mother country was again possible there was no Greenland
colony. Perhaps the finding of "white" Eskimo in Victoria Land may
explain this disappearance.

[Illustration: A group of Eskimos in south Greenland]

Subsequently the island was again colonized, but concerning the
disappearance of the former inhabitants history is silent. The mute
testimony of a few ruined buildings and relics is all that has been
found to give the least shadow of information as to the final struggle
of the wretched colonists. We only know that they mysteriously
disappeared. But the great glacial cap is slowly reced