The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-09-07
GEOGRAPHICAL BOTTLES.

Enclosed Basins That Make the
 Worlds Best Harbors.
 If weA take trip around the world, over the maps of a good atlas, we shall find that the geographical bottle" is a very common type of harbor the world over. The coasts of Cuba show suc- cession of such enclosed bays, Havana harbor being typical. It often hap pens that nature herself provides the corks also, in the shape of islands that almost block up the entrance, or at least block the view from the outside. Such d cork is Corregidor Island, in Manila Bay or the rocky Alcantraz fortress just inside the Golden Gate at San Francisco, and Smith Cay occu- pies a similar position at Santiago.
 The Annapolis Basin in Nova Scotia, is very typical among these geographi- cal bottles A fairly good map of that beautiful country will show a narrow gap on the Bay of Fundy side of the peninsula. This gap, known as Dlgby Strait, breaks through long ridge that the people call North Mountain. Through this break rush the famous tides of Fundy and fill up an inland basin of salt water twenty miles long and several in width, The entrance from the outside Is mysteriously invis- lble to the landsmens eye, To a pas senger crossing the Bay of Fundy from St, John It seems as if the captain were steering his trim sIde-wheeler head on Into blue mountain wall. At last the forested mountain opens and through the break the interior hills of Nova Scotia close the distance. One can imagine the tremendous tide race through this Dlgby Strait when we know that the ordinary tidal rise in the region is anywhere from forty to seventy feet It is so great, In fact, that the wharves at Digby are two- storied affairs, and people go aboard steamers from the upper or lower sto- ry, according to the height of the tide.
 New York harbor is, in most re- spects, a geographical bottle-only 1t has two mouths instead of one. Added to the principal opening, the Narrows, a sort of side entrance is provided by the East River leading out into the Sound.
 The coast of Australia presents seve- ral examples of the geographical bot tie, the finest being the harbor of Mel bourne An ordinary map shows tho city located apparently upon q first rate harbor of the bottle type. As a matter of fact, the bottle is really there "a magnificent enclosure of salt water fully thirty-five miles across In either direction, Into this bay, called Port Philip, there flows the Yarra river; and oddly enough, Melbourne with It's half million people, hides itself away nine miles up this stream! Below the city the river has two sand bars which pre- vent the passage of large vessls. The heavy ocean traffic, therefore, has it's terminus In the bay whence the jour ney is continued to town by rail. The explanation for this awkward situation seems to be that in the early days of Melbourne the one idea of the settlers was to build as near ts might be to the gold diggings So up the river the miners planted their settlement, never dreaming that one day 1t would become great metropolis imprisoned behind the sands of the useless Yarra.
 Rio Janeiro has a splendid enclosed harbor-the best in all South America; better far than the shallow Lake Mar a caibo which looks so ideal upon the map. Here again at Rio we have a great salt water inlet some seventeen miles across, communicating with the ocean by a narrow strait.
 In nearly every case these natural bottles are what the geographr calls drowned rivers" That is to say, the coastal lands in the vicinity have sub sided, allowing the sea to flow in and convert what was lowland valley into a partly enclosed marine area. Divers have gone to the bottom of New York Bay and have found there the ancient bed of the Hudson river, as that stream flowed before the mouthWard part of its valley subslded into the sea. The old bed reaches through the Mar rows and well out into the door of the Atlantic. Of course. as the sea water entered the sinking valley, any hills rising thereabout would become islands in the new order of things. And there we find them to this day In almost any of these enclosed inlets.-st. Nicholas.