This paper proposes a new approach to palmprint verification based on the gradient, in which a palm image is considered to be a three-dimensional terrain. Principal lines and wrinkles make deep and shallow valleys on a palm landscape. Then the steepest slope direction in each local area is first computed using the Kirsch operator, after which an orientation map is created that represents the dominant slope direction of each pixel. In this study, three orientation maps were made with different scales to represent local and global gradient information. Next, feature matching based on pixel-unit comparison was performed. The experimental results showed that the proposed method is superior to several state-of-the-art methods. In addition, the verification could be greatly improved by fusing orientation maps with different scales.