ONCE UPON A TIME， half-a-million years ago， there was a green country，
but it started to snow.
The snow fell very gently in that first fall， as though it hardly
meant to. It left nothing more behind than a dusting of white over the
land， which vanished into the air as soon as the sun touched it. But
the next winter was a little colder and the snow lay a little longer and
gradually， imperceptibly， year after year， the winters grew colder still.
Soon the snow was falling in storms， and after that in blizzards， After
a time each winter s drifts were too deep for the thin summer sun to
melt them away， and the next winter s snow made them deeper still.
And still the snow kept falling， winter after winter.
Today it is 1910. After four Ice Ages Greenland is no longer green，
and not much of a land either. It is nothing more than an enormous
mountain of snow two miles high， crushed into ice by its own sheer
weight， the land beneath forced down below the level of the sea. All
that shows today of the largest island in the world is a ragged fringe
of mountains and islands which creep out from under the edges.
Greenland is the Ice Cap， a cold and barren waste of rolling white
plains， deep crevasses and sharp ridges， with the everlasting winds
roaring across it like screaming demons. It is a howling wilderness，
and one of the few truly lifeless deserts on earth.
The enormous weight of the Ice Cap bears down on the ice below，
and squeezes it slowly into glaciers that come creeping out in tortoise
rivers through tile fringe of mountains. Today， late in September
1910， the ice that fell as snow a thousand years before Christ was
born has come down through the valleys behind Jakobshavn and
reaches the sea at last，
But the ice does not stop there. The glacier keeps pressing inexora-
bly forward， sixty-five feet a day， and soon a tongue of ice spreads
out into the fiord， It is still only September. The water is warm and so
the ice is melting already. Muddy water and a rabble of ice stream
away， drifting off down the fiord. Currents surge up the sunken face
of the glacier， blasting the fierce miniature world of plankton into tile
light. Little brown polar cod swarm at the edge of the ice and browse
on the tiny shrimps， and flocks of seabirds swoop and dive on cod
and shrimps alike. There are big， piratical glaucous gulls the size of
geese， almost white in the bright autumn sunshine， and elegant little
ldttiwakes， grey and white and yodelling. Auks， like miniature flying
penguins: big black-and-white murres and small black-and-white
dovekies， and black guillemots with feet as red as coral. Fulmars. the
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