Audubon County journal. (Exira, Iowa) 1884-1993, 1920-09-16
MOUNTAIN in SEA
Summit Known as Laura Ethel Is
the Highest.
Twenty Thousand Feet Above the
Lowest Level of the Atlantic Basin
Approximate Location of
"Davy Jones' Locker"

AT the captains table on an Atlantic
liner young woman idly inquired how
Tar the ship was from the nearest
land. Several passengers would have
said offhand, about eight hundred
miles, But the captain turned the
question over to a quiet gentleman who
looked at his watch and at a chart and
amazed his hearers by answering
Just about seventy yards"
The land | speak of is Just thirty
six fathoms beneath this ship" CON
tlnued the expert oceanographer. at
is the summit of the Laura Ethel
mountain, which is 10000 feet above
the lowest level of the Atlantic basin.
1T 1T We're some two hundred feet high
er, or the sea We're two hundred feet
lower, you would call it an island.
In effect, the Atlantic is huge con-
tlnent boasting superficial area of
25,0OO,OO0 square miles. 1t is 5000
miles long and 300 miles broad The
depth of the water that covers it is
by no means so considerable as people
used to imagine. Oceanography as
a science may be said to date only
from about 1850, but-thanks chiefly
to the labors of the cable-laying and
cable-repairng ships-our knowledge
OF the confguration of the bed of the
ocean grows greater every year.
The Laura Ethel mountain, discover
ed in 1878, is the uppermost peak of
one of the most celebrated of the SUBJ
marine elevations in the Atlantic
Mount Chaucer, at the eastward Of
it, was revealed to oceanographers in
1850. Sainthill, which Is westward of
both, has the honor to be the first
mountain discovered in the Atlantic.
1t became known in 1882.
Prior to the laying of the first At
lantic cable Lieutenant Maury, United
States navy, made it known that
wide plateau exists beneath the ocean,
running from Ireland to Newfound-
land. 1t seemed so admirably suited
to the purpose of cable laying that he
modestly called it Telegraphic plateau,
but in most charts it bears the discov-
er's name.
The location of "Davy Jones' Lock-
err" might be said to have been estab-
lished with the discovery of Sainthill.
1t has been estimated that at the base
of this eminence the relics of not few
er than seven thousand wrecks lie
scattered. Or one might ascribe that
grewsome distinction to the Faraday
hills, discovered in 1883 and lying be-
tween Mount Chaucer and Laura
Ethel mountain. These hills are noted
among oceanographers for the amount
Of wreckage Of which they are the
monument
There are cavernous depths, Of
course, in the Atlantic, as we'll as ma
jestic heights. -Four miles and half
may be taken to be the greatest. The
average is probably about two miles
Heights and depths alike are merely
hidden land, which may some day be
exposed by the mighty workings of ma
ture.
Meantime comparatively few changes
occur. Beneath the ocean there are no
frosts, no lightnings, no glaciers, no me-
neurological agents at work. If it were
not for the eddies and the destruction
and accumulation of animal life, these
Atlantic hills and wales might rest as
immutable as the peaks and craters OF
the moon, where there is no atmos-
phere to cause decay.