ABSTRACT
SUCH is the immeasurable depth of water off many of the mountainous coasts of Norway that, however long the sounding-lines with which they can fill the largest ship, if a leaden plummet is let down, no bottom may be found. 1 The power of Nature, too, is such that, the higher the mountains jut upwards, the more unfathomable will the depth appear at their roots, though their great height above the earth is considered to be quite insignificant in relation to the sky. The feet also of these mountains are so full of hollows, and these so deep and crooked, that when lines have been lowered into them it is very difficult to discover in what direction the cleft goes. There are shores, too, in the land of Ceylon, as Pliny tells us in Bk II, Ch. 7, separated from each other by sandy channels of indeterminable depth. The natives have very little confidence in lowering anchors into them. 2 Again, in the island of Bornholm, which is subject to the Danish king, lakes of no great size are found, whose depth cannot be known. Then, among the Dalecarlians who live in the mountains (their name in fact means ‘men of the valleys’) there is a lake Runn (that is, ‘round’), which never allows its floor to be fathomed. 3 Finally, not far from the royal palace of Stockholm in Sweden there is a place among the rocks by the sea commonly called Rundisvalia, that is, ‘round chasm’; here, too, it is impossible to probe and ascertain how deep the bottom is. 4 Many wells are found, besides, and small lakes whose depth has very often been investigated but has been impossible to discover.
Unfathomable depth
Great height of mountains is held very slight when compared with sky
Ships are held without anchors Bornholm Dalecarlians
Rundisvalia, a round chasm
