this curious subject of the gradual changes of level on the land has been chiefly revived by Sir Charles Lyell, in whose admirable works on geology all the details will be found.[88] CHAPTER XIV. Arctic Lands—Greenland—Spitzbergen—Iceland—Its Volcanic Phenomena and Geysers—Jan Mayen’s Land—New Siberian Islands—Antarctic Lands—Victoria Continent. GREENLAND, the most extensive of the Arctic lands, begins with the lofty promontory of Cape Farewell, the southern extremity of a group of rocky islands, which are separated by a channel five miles wide from a table-land of appalling aspect, narrow to the south, but increasing in breadth northward to a distance of which only 1300 miles are known. This table-land is bounded by mountains rising from the deep in mural precipices, which terminate in needles and pyramids, or in parallel terraces, of alternate snow and bare rock, occasionally leaving a narrow shore. The coating of ice is so continuous and thick that the surface of the table-land may be regarded as one enormous glacier, which overlaps the rocky edges and dips between the mountain-peaks into the sea. The coasts are beset with rocky islands, and cloven by fiords, which in some instances wind like rivers for 100 miles into the interior. These deep inlets of the sea, now sparkling in sunshine, now shaded in gloom, are hemmed in by walls of rock often 2000 feet high, whose summits are hid in the clouds. They generally terminate in glaciers, which are sometimes forced on by the pressure of the upper ice-plains till they fill the fiord, and even project far into the sea like bold headlands, when, undermined by the surge, huge masses of ice fall from them with a crash like thunder, making the sea boil. These icebergs, carried by currents, are stranded on the Arctic coast, or are drawn into lower latitudes. The ice is very transparent and compact in the Arctic regions; its prevailing tints are blue, green, and orange, which, contrasted with the dazzling whiteness of the snow and the gloomy hue of the rocks, produce a striking effect. A great fiord in the 68th parallel of latitude is supposed to extend completely across the table-land, dividing the country into south and north Greenland, which last extends indefinitely towards the pole; but it is altogether inaccessible from the frozen sea and the iron-bound shore, so that, excepting a very small portion of the coast, it is an unknown region.