J360 THE STORY-BOOK OF SCIENCE 



was Claire's comment, "its summit would only just 

 reach the surface of the water. ' ' 



"There are deeper places than that. In the At- 

 lantic, south of the banks of Newfoundland, one of 

 the best spots for cod-fishing, the lead shows about 

 8000 meters. The highest mountains in the world, 

 in Central Asia, are 8840 meters high." 



"Those mountains would come up above the sur- 

 face of the water in the place you spoke of, and 

 would form islands 850 meters in height. " 



"Finally, in the seas about the South Pole there 

 are places where the lead shows 14,000 or 15,000 

 meters of depth, or nearly 4 leagues. Nowhere has 

 the dry land any such altitudes. 



"Between these fearful chasms and the shore 

 where the water is no deeper than the thickness of 

 one's finger, all the intermediate degrees may be 

 found, sometimes varying gradually, sometimes sud- 

 denly, according to the configuration of the ground 

 underneath. On one shore the sea increases in depth 

 with frightful rapidity. That shore is, then, the top 

 of an escarpment of which the sea washes the base. 

 On another it increases little by little, and one must 

 go a long distance to attain a depth of a few meters. 

 There the ocean bed is a plain, sloping almost im- 

 perceptibly, in continuation of the terrestrial plain. 



"The average depth of the ocean appears to be 

 from six to seven kilometers ; that is to say, if all the 

 submarine irregularities were to disappear and give 

 place to a level bed, like the bottom of a basin made 

 by man, the seas, while preserving on the surface 



