Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 36, Number 138, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 December 1904 — RECENT WATER SURVEYS. [ARTICLE]

RECENT WATER SURVEYS.

K*w Zealand Lake* Not Large, bnt Found to Be Very Beep. The government of New Zealand set a lot of men at work a while ago collecting facts about the fresh-wateT lakes of New Zealaud. One part of the work was the taking of soundings for the purpose of determining the form of the lake basins. These surveys have covered all the more important lakes. They are all in the north island except two, which are nestled below the snow and glaciers of-the New Zealand Alps in the south Island. The surveyors have discovered a remarkable fact about these two mountain lakes. They had to splice their sounding wire to reach the bottom in each of these lakes. Though they are not very large sheets of water, they prove to be among the deepest lakes in the world. Lake Manapouri is about twice as large as Manhattan Island., It is long and narrow and not remarkably deep excepting in one area embracing nearly three square miles, every bit of which is over’ 1,400 feet beneath the surface. The greatest depth found was 1,458 feet. The highest and deepest slopes of the mountains hem In this deepest depression of the lake bottom. Lake Wakatipu is 49 miles long and about five times as large as Manhattan Island. Its greatest depth is 1,242 feet, in which respect the other lake beats It; but the remarkable thing about Wakatipu is that few lakes reach so great an average depth. The entire water surface, covering 112 square miles, is on an average 707 feet above the bottom of the lake. Lake Superior is the deepest of our lakes, but its average depth is only four-sevenths that of Lake Wakatipu. The New Zealand lake has,double the average depth of Lakes Michigan and Ontario, three, times that of Huron and ten times that of Erie. Some persons may think these lakes are so deep because they are hemmed in by mountains. But probably none of the Alpine lakes of Europe is so deep as these two fresh-water sheets. Possibly the only inland bodies of water surpassing them in greatest depth are the Caspian, with 2,400 feet, Tanganika, with 2,100 feet, and Baikal, with 4,550 feet.