HIDDEN CONTINENTS

Waipa Post, Volume 32, Issue 1778, 3 July 1926, Page 7

HIDDEN CONTINENTS

A TRIP ALONG THE OCEAN FLOOR. i Most of us think of islands as pieces of land surrounded by water. So they are; but they are much more than that. They are,' of course, the uncovered, summits of vast mountains, whose steep sides slope down to the sea bottom. We are apt to forget that beneath the swirling surface of the oceans of the world lie concealed vast continents very much like those upon which animal life lives and flourishes. Suppose the oceans to have gone dry, and that we start out by motor car from Dieppe to explore'the Atlantic. We should start running smoothly down a gentle hill into a wide, shallow valley—the Channel Valley—and so for miles we should travel parallel with the valleys on the northern side—the cliffs of England, until on our right we should discern the range of- mountains which the southern coast of Ireland would present to

Then as we travelled westward a marvellous view would spread, itself at our feet, for the ground between us would be seen to shelve down into a vast country some four miles below our car. In four or five hours we should be on the floor of the Atlantic. Stopping the car and looking back’ we should see vast mountains standing out against the skyline. . . Mount Ireland and Mount England and the Continent-Mountain Europe.

There i s a prevalent notion that the floor of the Atlantic is more or less flat. This is not so. If we steer our car south we shall soon see on the horizon vast mountains, higher than any we have seen, rising from the undulating country about us. St. Helena and Ascension, to our vision today but little islands will stand revealed as the tips of vast mountain ranges, so steep as to defy even a modern car, and comparable to the vast ranges of the Himalayas. If we turn and, travel north until we reach the northern Atlantic we shall see yet another vast range of mountains —the King Edward VII. rage, only recently discovered by oceanographers, and so high that their summits, if a little higher, would have been islands and probably inhabited by the human race! If we travelled to the Pacific we should find just the same characteristics —hills, and valleys, mountain ranges—a new one was found in 1901 in the South Pacific—plains and chasms. Seen thus we would realise that our islands and continents are but the summits of great submerged mountain ranges and that, in a sense, we all dwell on the peaks of eminences surrounded by water.

What we should see of flora would be no less wonderful. What we should find of derelict hulks, sunken treasure ships, and other romantic wreckage, most of us can imagine when the heavy toll of the seas through the centuries is borne in mind.

'Some day a complete map of the ocean’s beds will be made. But not yet. At present our knowledge is scrappy and incomplete. And it is more than likely that there still exist uncharted islands in the, remote waters far from the paths of the world’s ocean traffic.