THE DEEPEST LAKE KNOWN.
By far the deepest lake in the world is Lake Baikal, in Siberia, which is in every way comparable to the great Canadian lakes as regards size; for, while its area of over 9,000 square miles makes it about equal to Lake Erie in superficial extent, its enormous depth of between 4,000 and 4,500 feet makes the volume of its waters almost equal to that of Lake Superior. Although its surface is 1,350 feet above the sea level, its bottom is nearly 3,000 feet below it. The Caspian Lake, or Sea, as it is usually called, has a depth in its southern basin of over 3,000 feet. Lake Maggiore is 2,800 feet deep, Lake Como nearly 2,000 feet, and Lagodi-Garda, another Italian lake, has a depth in certain places of 1,900 feet. Lake Constance is over 1,000 feet deep, and Huron and Michigan reach depths of 900 and 1,000 feet.
Blowout Mountains in the cascades above Breitenbush, Ore., is unmistakably one of the wonders of the cascades, consisting of about eight hundred acres of granite rock piled up in every conceivable shape. From all indications it has been caused by an accumulation of gas below, which bursting out threw the rock into the cañon, forming a beautiful lake from twenty to thirty rods wide and half a mile long, in which abound myriads of trout.
A peculiar fish, of brown color, without scales, and weighing twenty-one pounds, was caught in a net at New Dorp, Staten Island, this week, by the lighthouse keeper. In forty years’ fishing the keeper has never seen a similar fish.