TWO HIDDEN TREASURES
What one waterfall towers higher than any other?
If you choose Niagara, you are far from the mark. Niagara is a mere bump on the landscape when compared to Gledbach Falls in Switzerland, Coquenan, in Venezuela and Angel Falls, also in Venezuela, puts them all to shame. Angel Falls is actually fifteen times higher than Niagara.
Name any other of a score of high waterfalls on Earth and they are all a splash in a puddle when compared to the greatest one.
The Denmark Strait Cataract stands four times higher than than Angel Falls' at 3,212 feet. Water pours over the precipice at Denmark Strait Cataract at a rate of 1.3 billion gallons of water per second. It,then, falls 2.2 miles. Very few ,if any, select the site for a Honeymoon Trip as they do Niagara. In fact, few have even hear of it. It lies beneath the surface of the North Atlantic Ocean between Denmark and Greenland.
I remained hidden until researchers began to find their current measuring devices ripped apart and torn from their lines. They found that cold water flowing from the polar regions flowed southward and literally “fell” over the edge of a giant underwater cliff. Cold water sinks in warm water and when it hit the bottom after 2.2 miles it spread out violently over a vast area. It does much to regulate currents for our oceans.
Other such undersea waterfalls are found at the point where the Mediterranian Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean; off Antarctica off the southern tip of South America and in the Iceland area. Together they play an important role in deciding temperature and current velocities.
Another water question: What is the world's largest lake?
It is not any one of our “Great Lakes”.
It is Lake Baikal which you will find looking deceptively small, in that vast Asiatic chunk of land just below the Mongolian border which is the part of Russia we used to think of as Siberia. I worked with a man years ago who was born at Lake Baikal and he spoke with evident pride concerning the area and its wonders. It is thought to be about 25 milion years old. It is over four hundred miles long and about eighty miles wide on the average It is 6,200 feet deep and contains one-fifth of the total water supply of Earth. It would take all of the rivers of the planet Earth flowing for a full year to fill it up. That's more water than is held by all our Great Lakes combined.
A.L.M. January 11, 2003 [c437wds]
