president's addkess. 109 



Some of the ascertained facts are already sufficiently surprising, 

 and I cannot refrain from referring to one or two of these which 

 may not perhaps, appearing as they have done at uncertain in- 

 tervals in the public journals, have caught the eye of all the 

 members of our society. 



"The sectional soundings obtained in the North Atlantic 

 proved that a dividing ridge extends down the middle of the sea 

 from Greenland and Iceland to the South American coast, in the 

 neighbourhood of the mouths of the Amazon, embracing the vol- 

 canic region of the Azores or Western Islands, and having no- 

 where more than two miles depth of water. To the eastward, 

 separating it from the coast of Europe and Africa, is an extensive 

 valley, with a depth of two-and-a-half to three miles, stretching 

 from the equator northwards to about the latitude of Ireland, 

 where it rises to the level of the dividing ridge. If this valley 

 were dry, the magnificent view it would present is quite incon- 

 ceivable, as, on its way north, it passes close to the western foot 

 of the then gigantic mountains of the Cape de Yerde and Canary 

 Islands, the latter being towered over by the Peak of TenerifTe, 

 which, rising in one grand and glorious slope, carries its proud 

 head at the enormous height of twenty-six thousand feet above 

 the valley. Between it and Madeira, only two hundred and fifty 

 miles further north, a deep gorge runs up to the eastward, to- 

 wards the Mediterranean. Thus Madeira standing at the fork 

 between the two valleys commands them from an altitude of 

 twenty thousand feet. 



' ' On the western side of the Azores plateau a vast slightly un- 

 dulating plain extends towards the American continent, with a 

 mean depth of water of two-and-three-quartcr miles. In the 

 bight formed by Newfoundland, America, and the West Indies, 

 the isolated, solitary, and probably volcanic peak of Bermuda, 

 which is now only two hundred and sixty feet above water, rises 

 a lonely colossal column, fifteen thousand feet above the plain, 

 commanding the view over the mighty amphitheatre, whose least 

 radius is five hundred miles." 



Such will be the grand physical features of the Atlantic basin 

 if the day of the literal fulfilment of the words "there shall be 



