Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 June 1893 — The Bed of the Atlantic. [ARTICLE]

The Bed of the Atlantic.

Proceeding westward from the Irish coast the ocean bed deepens very gradually; in fact, for the first 230 miles the gradient is but six feet to the mile. In the next twenty miles, however, the fall is over 9,000 feet, and so precipitous ig the sudden descent that in many places depths of 1,200 to 1,600 fathoms are encountered in very close proximity to the 100-fathom line. With the depth of 1,800 to 2,000 fathoms the sea bed in part of the Atlantic becomes a slightly undulating plain, whose gradients are so light that they show but little -alteration of depth for 1.200 miles. The extraordinary flatness of these submarine prairies renders the familiar simile of the basin rather inappropriate. The hollow of the Atlantic is not strictly a basin whose depth increases regularly toward the centre; it is rather a saucer or dishlike one, so even is the contour of ita bed. The greatest depth of the Atlantic has been found some 100 iqiles to the northward of the Island of St. Thomas, where soundings of 3,875 fathoms were obtained. The seas round Great Britain can hardly be regarded as forming part of the Atlantic hollow. They are rather a part of the platform banks of the European continent which the ocean has overflowed. An elevatioa of the sea bed 100 fathoms would suffice to lay bare the greatest part of the North Sea and join England to Denmark, Holland, Belgium, and France. A deep channel of watei would run down the west coast of Norway, and with this the majority of the fiords would be connected. A great part of the Bay of Biscay would disappear; but Spain and Portugal are but little removed from the Atlantic depression. The 100-fathom line approaches very near the west coast, and soundings of 1,000 fathoms can be made within twenty miles of Cape St. Vincent, and much greater depths have been sounded at distances but little greater than this from the western shores of the Iberian Peninsula. —[Nautical Magazine.