Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 January 1886 — Land and Sea. [ARTICLE]

Land and Sea.

The continents, according to Mr. John Murray, of the great Challenger expedition, have an average height of .about 900 feet above sea-level, and occupy five-sixteenths of the earth’s surface. The seas’ “abyssmal regions” occupy about’ half of the earth’s surface, and have an average depth of three; miles. In the Pacific the greatest depths are to the south and east of Japan, where there are abysses of over five miles; and in the Atlantic the greatest depression of a little over four miles is to the north of the Virgin Islands. The great ocean basins—once so dark and mysterious—have been rapidly becoming familiar to man during the last twenty years.