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Show LOST OR STRAYED THE SARGASSO SEA. The next thing they will be telling us that there are no such things as sea-serpents, mermaids of phantom ships. The mystery and romance of the sea is "rapidly being reduced to zero by modern scientific investigation," as the Paris Cosmos observes. It is the Sargasso sea that is now to be added to the list of myths. There is no such thing, according to the learned findings of a scientific expedition sent out from Norway. Ancient mariners have always told weird tales about the Sargasso sea how vessels once caught in that deadly calm became entangled in seaweed and never got out, etc. But now all these thrilling yarns will have to be labeled "Nature Fakes," it seems. There is plenty of seaweed in the mid-Atlantic, these Norwegian scientists admit. This weed whose book name is "Sargassum bacci-ferum" bacci-ferum" tends to gather in an eddy caused by the Gulf stream but there is no such mass of it a3 the old sailors tell about. Nevertheless, even Columbus tells us in his journal that from Septemper 16 to October Octo-ber 12, 1492, his vessels were constantly surrounded by the sargasso weed. The famous Sargasso sea in the Atlantic is not the only one the sailors know of, however. There is another one in the Pacific off the coast of Lower California, and a' third in the Antarctic sea south of Australia. These masses of seaweed are of little account to modern steamers, which can plow through them, but to the old sailing vessels they were a gTeat menace, in spite of what the Norwegian scientists now say. |