SIX HUNDRED FEET OF FROZEN GROUND.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VIII, Issue 43, 24 October 1891, Page 509

SIX HUNDRED FEET OF FROZEN GROUND.

Scientific men have been perplexed for many years over the phenomenon of a certain well at Yakutsk, Siberia. A Russian merchant in 1828 began to dig the well, but he gave up the task three years later, when he had dug down thirty feet, and was still in solidly frozen soil. Then the Russian Academy of Sciences dug away at the well for months, but ceased when it had reached a depth of 382 feet, and the ground was still frozen as hard as a rock. In 1844 the Academy had the temperature of the excavation carefully taken at various depths, and from these data it was estimated that the ground was frozen to a depth of 612 feet. Although the pole of the greatest cold is in this province of Yakutsk, not even the terrible severity of the Siberian winters could freeze the ground to a depth of over 600 feet. Geologists have decided that the frozen valley of the lower Lena is a formation of the glacial period. They believe, in short, that it froze solidly then, and has never since hail a chance to thaw out.