Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-10-13
GEOGRAPHICAL BOTTLES.
Inclosed Basins That Make the
Worlds Best Harbors.


If we take trip around the world, over
the maps Of good atlas, we shall find that
the geographical bottle" is a very COM
mon type of harbor the world over. The
coasts of Cuba show succession of such
Enclosed bays. Havana harbor being typical.
1t often happens that nature herself pro-
vides the corks also, In the shape Of islands
that almost block up the entrance, or at
least block the view from the outside. Such
a cork is Corregidor Island. in Manila bay.
or the rocky Alcatraz fortress just inside
the Golden Gate at San Francisco, and
Smith bay occupies a similar position at
Santiago.
The Annapolis basin, in Nova Scotia, is
very typical among these geographical bot
ties. 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 Digby strait, breaks through
a long ridge that the people call North
mountain. Through this break rush the IA
nous 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 mysterously invisible to the
landsmans eye. To a passenger crossing
the Bay of Fundy from ST john it seems
as If the captain were steering his trim
S6ew heller head on into a blue mountain
wall. But at last the forestcd mountain
opens and through the break the interior
hills of Nova Scotia close the distance. One
can imagine the tremendous tide race
through this Digby strait when we know
that the ordinary tidal rise in this region
is anywhere from forty to seventy feet. 1t
is so great, in fact that the wharves at
Digby are two-storied affairs, and people go
aboard steamers from the upper lower
story, according to the height of the tide.
New York harbOr IS, in most respects, a
geographical bottle-only it has two mouths
ing, the Narrows, a sort of side entrance is
provided by the East river, leading out into
the sound.
The coast Of Australia presents several
examples of the geographical bottle. the
finest being the harbor of Melbourne. An
ordinary map shows this city located appar-
emily upon first rate harbor of the bottle
type. AS 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 Phillip,
there flows the Yarra river; and oddly
enough, Melbourne, with its half million
people, hides itself away nine miles up this
stream. Below the city the river has two
sand bars which prevent the passage Of
large vessels. The heavy ocean traffic,
therefore, has its terminus in the bay.
whence the journey 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 set
tiers was to build as as might be to
miners planted their settlement, never
dreaming that one day it would become a
great metropolis, imprisoned behind the
sands of the useless Yarra.
Rio Janeiro has splendid inclosed har
bor-the best in all South America better
far than the shallow Lake Maracaibo,
which looks SO ideal upon the mtp. Here
again at Rio we have a great salt water
inlet, some seventeen miles across, COM
municating with the ocean by a narrow
strait.
In nearly every case these natural bottles
are what the geographer calls drowned
rivers That Is to say, the coastal lands in
the vicinity have subsidized allowing the sea
| to flow in and convert what was a lowland
! valley into partly inclosed 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 Lefore the mouthward part of its
valley subsidized into the sea. The old bed
reaches through the Narrows and well out
into the floor 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 inclosed inlets.