The Washington herald., 1913-12-28
BOTTOM OF SEA MUCH
VASTER THAN EARTH
Writer Traces the Valleys in the
East and West Atlantic
Ocean.

The bottom Of the sea is two and one
half times as vast as the surface Of the
earth. Its mass is enormous, relatively
Observation-Disclosures at one milIiard
and one-third kilometers.
IF the basin OF the sea had been
emptied at the moment OF the birth of
Jesus Christ, and IL an enormous flood,
taken from some unknown source, had
been poured into the empty basin at the
rate Of a cubic kilometer a minute. the
basin would not yet be full. Nearly 800
years would be needed to complete the
task of bringing the waters of the sea
to their present level
This is the way a writer in the Jour-
nal de St. Petersburg published in
French in the Russian capitaD begins a
consideration OF the bottom of the sea
The earth under the sea, he continues. is
very like the superaquatic earth. In 1t
are plains plateaus, peaks, small hills.
valleys, and ravines. But down there.
there are no sharp edges. 1t has all
been worn smooth by the washing Of
the eternal seas" The landscape is visi-
bly, aged and very monotonous like the
earth exposed by digging under ancient
ruins For example, take the Atlantic
Ocean.
Under the extremely regular dark line
which forms the upper limit Of the
eQuatic atmosphere. the submerged land
shows the trace Of various accidents of
nature. Looking at the sea. II Is very
easy to imagine that there must be a
very deep valley under all that mess OF
water, and that the valley must have an
axis like the axes OF the two continents
4 friCan and AFnAriNan
the real depths Of the sea are q very
different matter. At the bottom Of the
sea there are two valleys. The one near
est TO Europe is the valley Of the East
Atlantic. OF course, il is further south,
starting between Africa and South
America, In the neighborhood of the val
ley of North Africa, and passing be-
tween the Cape Verde Islands and the
Azores, to the southwest of the Cape
Verde Islands That valley Is very deep.
and. at its deepest, there are more than
FIVE kilometers OF water overhead. The
valley OF the East Atlantic runs along
near Europe. ending southwest Of the
British Isles, where II Is separated from
the basin of the North Sea by sort Of
crest The other valley-the valley of
the West Atlantic-is on a very much
larger scale, parallel to the valley of
the East Atlantic. The two valleys are
separated by what builders would call q
'sill,' long strip passing between the
Azores. which may be called q SUBJ
aquatic rise OF ground. This sill Is not
over ao0o meters deep. 1t Is a subma-
rine chain separating the two valleys.
the general direction being from north
to south-a chain which. counting from
the depths of the valleys, Is more than
1000 meters high. The valley OF the
West Atlantic is very deep, the bottom
being more than five kilometers below
the surface of the sea. AS 1t skirts
South America, the West Indies Islands
lie upon its left. 1t runs under the
broad sea on Newfoundland and Labra-
dor. ending OF Greenland. The sill con-
tinues to Iceland. This sub-Atlantic
earth, therefore, comprises two great
parallel valleys, separated by q chain OF
mountains. Toward the north the ground
Of the valley is high.