MINERALOGY —The accumulation of the • ice having rendered the interior of Greenland totally inaccessible, it can only he examined on different parts of the coast ; and the promontory Cape Farewell, which is its most southern point, presents to the eye immense groups of precipitous mountain masses, insulated, barren and naked, sharp•point cd at the top, greatly decomposed at the surface, and cleft by the action of the snows and the ice. These rocks are intersected by narrow valleys, where immense broken and scattered masses are borne along by irresistible currents, and carried immediately to the shores, where there is no low land to intercept their course. The GRANITE of this island is fine granular, consisting of pearl white felspar, greyish black mica, and very little quartz of an ash grey colour. The whole rock is very much ironshot, and dis integrated. At the foot of the granite rocks occur beds of common quartz of a milk white colour, (not milk quartz,) and flesh red felspar, with small crystals of moroxite, (fo liated or common apatite.) In another place are found flesh red felspar, with little quartz, common hornblende, magnetic iron-stone, and gadolinite, crystallized in longish four-sided pyramids. A bed on the east side of this pro montory, contains garnets in a fine granular greyish v bite rock, very much resembling the rock of Namiest in Mo ravia, called by \Verner wciss-stein, (white stone ;) but the crystals of garnet here are larger, and perfect dodeca hedrons. The granite extends from Cape Farewell to the east and south-east of the coast, viz. over the islands of Staaten.huck and Kakasoeitsiak, Alluck, and Cape Dis cord, to a distance of more than 400 miles. Gneiss and mica slate lie upon it at Kippingajak, both rocks contain ing garnets. Talc slate forms a large bed in it at Akajar osanik, along with actynolite, which occurs in large mas ses. Near the coast of Akajarosanik, is the small island called Kakasocitsiak. It consists of one hill, formed of a granitic rock, mixed with some hornblende, slender cry stals of zirkon, and the new mineral called 411anite. (Sec Edin. Trans. vol. vi. p. 371.) The rock here assumes the character of the Norwegian zirkon-syenite : but its consti tuent parts are of a finer grain. All the granitic mountains of the islands of Staaten-huck and Cape Farewell, are sur rounded by numerous very small islands, presenting rourorl backed or flat conical low hills of primitive syenite. To the west of Cape Farewell, at a place called Niakornak, is a very extensive bed of yellowish white felspar, crystal lized in large flat six-sided prisms, the crystals being only separated by black mica, which gives to the rock a por phyritic appearance. The place is very difficultly accessi
ble, it being harassed perpetually by the most boisterous sea, and washed by the tide at high water. Not far from this, at an elevation of about 1000 feet, the granite is di vided into immense columnar or quadrangular pieces, which, seen from a distance, present an appearance simi, lar to the ruins of a town. The Greenlanders state, that the masses were carried thither by some giants, who inha bited the country in the oldest times, and, having been sor cerers, disappeared from the earth.
As granite is the principal rock which constitutes the mountains of this vast coast, to enumerate all the places where it is found, would exceed the limits of such an ar ticle as the present. Its most common colour is greyish white, flesh-red, and tile-red ; the latter colours are cha racteristic of the coarse granular felspar. 'Magnetic iron ore is generally found.either disseminated or imbedded in the red variety. In some places, molybdena occurs, and in others graphite imbedded in the rock. At Baal's river and at Disko island, iron pyrites is found ; but excepting there, the rock is not very metalliferous. Precious garnet occurs very frequently ; also common schorl, tourmaline, common horn-Mende, jade, rock crystal, moroxite, calca reous spar, fluor spar, and the above mentioned substan ces. Rock crystal is only found in veins traversing the red coarse granular variety, and appears to be contempo raneous, the vein being intimately mingled with the rock, and presenting no walls. Beds of hornblende, slate, mica slate, felspar, and quartz rest upon it ; and on the red coarse granular granite at Kogneckpamiedlucek, there is an ex tensive bed of red ironstone mingled with massive iron flint (eisenkiesel of \Verner.) At the end of the north eastern arm of Baal's river, in the vicinity of the great con tinental ice, the traveller, ascending from a narrow cliff, suddenly beholds a dreadful chaos of immense columnar granitic blocks detached from each other, and heaped to gether in the most fantastic groups, the planes of fracture being so fresh, that the points from which they are broken are distinctly observable. Places of desolation and de vastation of this kind arc very frequently met with in the mountains of Greenland. Most of the granitic rocks affect the needle.