Soundings made in the Mediterranean suffice to indicate depths equal
to the average height of the mountains girding round this great basin;
and, if one particular experiment may be credited, reaching even to
15,000 feet--an equivalent to the elevation of the highest Alps. This
sounding was made about ninety miles east of Malta. Between Cyprus and
Egypt, 6000 feet of line had been let down without reaching the bottom.
Other deep soundings have been made in other places with similar
results. In the lines of sea between Egypt and the Archipelago, it is
stated that one sounding made by the _Tartarus_ between Alexandria
and Rhodes reached bottom at the depth of 9900 feet; another, between
Alexandria and Candia, gave a depth of 300 feet beyond this. These
single soundings, indeed, whether of ocean or sea, are always open to
the certainty that greater as well as lesser depths must exist, to
which no line has ever been sunk; a case coming under that general law
of probabilities so largely applicable in every part of physics. In the
Mediterranean especially, which has so many aspects of a sunken basin,
there may be abysses of depth here and there which no plummet is ever
destined to reach.--_Edinburgh Review._