“This maximum will approach 25,000 feet at each point and at the point the consequences will be most serious.
“In two of the segments situated opposite each other in the northern and southern hemispheres, the sea will retire to flow into the two other segments.
“In the first segment the Atlantic Ocean will almost entirely empty itself, the point of maximum being about the Bermudas, where the bottom will become visible if the depth of the sea in that locality be less than 25,000 feet. Consequently, between America and Europe, vast territories will be revealed, which the United States, Great Britain, France, Spain and Portugal can annex pro rata to their Atlantic coast-lines, or otherwise, as they may think fit. But it must be remembered that as the waters are lowered, so will the air be. The coast of Europe and America will be lifted to such an extent, that towns placed twenty or even thirty degrees from the point of maximum, will have no more air than is now available at three miles from the surface of the sea. New York, Philadelphia, Charlestown, Panama, Lisbon, Madrid, Paris, London, Edinburgh, Dublin will be thus elevated, but Cairo, Constantinople, Dantzic, Stockholm on one side, and the western coast towns of America on the other, will retain their present level. The Bermudas will be in such rarefied air as has hitherto been only experienced by aeronauts, and will become as uninhabitable as the upper peaks of the mountains of Tibet.
“Similar effects will be experienced in the opposite southern segment comprising the Indian Ocean, Australia, and the Pacific. At Adelaide and Melbourne the level of the sea will sink 25,000 feet below them, and the air will become so pure and rarefied as to be unbreathable.
“Such are the two segments from which the waters will retire. In the sea that will be left there will probably be many new islands, formed by the summits of submarine mountain-chains.
“In the other segments the waters will rise to a corresponding height.
“In the segment north-east of Kilimanjaro the maximum will be at Yakutsk in Siberia. This town will be submersed under 25,000 feet of water—less its actual altitude—and thence thinning out on all sides the flood will spread out over Asiatic Russia, India, China, Japan, and Alaska. The Ural Mountains may possibly appear above the waters as islands. St. Petersburg and Moscow on one side, Calcutta, Bangkok, Saigon, Pekin, Hong Kong, and Tokyo, on the other, will disappear beneath the waves at variable depths, but at depths quite sufficient to drown such of the Russians, Hindoos, Siamese, Cochinchinese, Chinese, and Japanese who have not left the country before the catastrophe.
“In the segment south-west of Kilimanjaro the disasters will not be of such magnitude, as the segment is in a great measure covered by the Atlantic and Pacific, the level of which will rise 25,000 feet above the Falkland Islands. But nevertheless much territory will disappear, among others all South Africa from the Gulf of Guinea and Kilimanjaro to the Cape of Good Hope, all South America south of Central Brazil and Peru, including Chili, the Argentine Republic down to Tierra del Fuego. The Patagonians, however tall they may be, will not escape destruction, as they will not even have the resource of escaping to the Cordilleras, not one of whose summits will in those parts rise above sea-level.
“Such will be the results produced by the changes of the level of the waters. And such are the eventualities for which those interested must prepare, unless something happens to prevent the dastardly enterprise of Barbicane & Co.”