Captain Corner set out on a twelve - (34) mile run eastward along the coast to see the nearest of the coal beds of the island. The coal is of Tertiary geological age and was formed in embayments in the older lava beds, when the land stood at a lower level than it does now. It proves that the climate of Greenland was much milder then than it is now, in fact that it was warm temperate or perhaps subtropical in character [verify this], for The coal bands contain large fragments of car- bonized wood which is more like charcoal than it is like true coal in texture, besides abundant impressions of leaves and other plant remains.