Understanding Geography
From time immemorial, man has wondered at the grand spectacle called the sea, sometimes placid as a sheet of water, sometimes terrific as hell with giant waves lashing the shores. Always a challenge to those who wanted to conquer it and a boon to pirates who made fortunes by mastering the sea. Here the animals are strange but a source of food for millions. Until Columbus discovered the new world, no one thought that it ever existed!
There are mountains and rivers and valleys in the oceans just as in the continents, but text books seldom high light it. The result is that a distinction has been made between the two, concentrating on continents all the while.
To know the true nature of the real earth, we must remove her cloths, the sands and soil and water covering her body! What do we see?
Let us start from Quito in Ecuador in Africa. A little distance westward, we see a big depression which we call the Atlantic Ocean in which the ridge is visible. Farther away, we see a plateau called the America. At the west end of this high land is a mountain, like a back bone. This is the Andes. Then comes a very low land stretching westward, almost half the surface of the earth in width. This vast plain is called the Pacific ocean. A mountain peak is just near Africa, Galapagos Island, lat 1s-long 90 w. Further west is a mountain peak, Gilbert Is. Then comes Borneo etc, all mountains, before reaching the African east coast.
The lowest plain Pacific, Atlantic at a higher level, then America and Eurasia at the highest level, all a continuous, not necessarily single, rock system. That is really the earth. Caves and tunnels, volcanoes and river like channels, gold and diamond deposits, oil and natural gas etc. etc. are all there irrespective of the level of the terrain.
