THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



231 



llPit 



aph by Frederick I. Monsen 



A DIVER IN THE HARBOR OF ST. THOMAS, VIRGIN ISLANDS 



Lower the surface of the ocean 600 feet and you would transform the geography of the 

 earth. Asia and North America would be united by a strip of land some 1,500 miles wide; 

 the Dutch East Indies and Borneo would be tied to the continent of Asia; New Guinea 

 would be a part of Australia; the North Sea would be only a narrow gulf off the point of 

 Norway; Ireland and England would be one and a part of continental Europe; a traveler 

 could go dry shod from Good Hope to Cape Horn via London, Berlin, Bagdad, Bombay, 

 Pekin, Tokyo, Sitka, San Francisco, Washington, and Buenos Aires. 



how much has been learned about the 

 seas, the while we realize that what we 

 know is much less than the proverbial 

 drop in the bucket as compared with 

 what remains a mystery. 



The most impressive thing about the 

 sea is its shallowness as compared with 



the size of the earth, and its depth as com- 

 pared with the height of the land. If 

 you were to take a globe six feet in di- 

 ameter and excavate the deepest trench 

 of the ocean thereon, it would be a bare 

 pin-scratch deep — about one-twentieth of 

 an inch. 



