Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 196, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 August 1920 — MOUNTAIN IN SEA [ARTICLE]

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 captain’s table on an Allantic liner a young woman idly Inquired how far 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 I speak of is just thirtysix fathoms beneath this ship,” continued the expert oceanographer. “It is the summit .of the Laura Ethel mountain, which is 20,000 feet above the lowest level of the Atlantic basin. If it were some two hundred feet higher, or the sea were two hundred feet lower, you would call it an island. In effect, the Atlantic Is a huge continent boasting a superficial area of 25,000,000 square miles. It is 9.000 miles long and 2,700 miles broad. The depth of the water that covers it is by nn 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-layihg and cable-repairing ships—our knowledge of the configuration of the bed of the ocean grows greater year. The Laura Ethel mountain, discovered in 1878, is the uppermost peak of one of the most celebrated of the submarine ele.ations in the Atlantic. Mount Chaucer, at the eastward of it, was revealed to oceanographers in 1850. Salnthlli, which is westward of both, has the honor to be the first mountain discovered in the Atlantic. It became known in 1832. Prior to the laying of the first Atlantic cable Lieutenant Maury, United States navy, made it known that a wide plateau exists beneath the ocean, running from Ireland to Newfoundland. It seemed so admirably suited to the purpose of cable laying that he modestly called it Telegraphic plateau, but in most charts it bears tile discover’s name. The location of “Davy Jones’ Locker” might be said to have been established with the discovery of Sainthill. It has been estimated that at the base of this eminence the relics of not fewer than seven thousand wrecks He scattered. Or one might ascribe that grewsome distinction to the Faraday hills, discovered in 1883 and lying between 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 well as majestic heights. Four miles and a 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 soihe day be exposed by the mighty workings of nature. Meantime comparatively few changes occur. Beneath the ocean there are no frosts, no lightnings, no glaciers, no meteorological agents at work. If It were not for the eddies and the destruction and accumulation of animal Kfe, these Atlantic hills and vales might rest as Immutable as the peaks and craters of the moon, where there Is no atmosphere to cause decay. x