This speed was kept up for several days, and in the evening
of the 9th of April we sighted the most westerly point of South
America that forms Cape San Roque. But then the Nautilus
swerved again, and sought the lowest depth of a submarine valley
which is between this Cape and Sierra Leone on the African coast.
This valley bifurcates to the parallel of the Antilles,
and terminates at the mouth by the enormous depression of 9,000 yards.
In this place, the geological basin of the ocean forms,
as far as the Lesser Antilles, a cliff to three and a half
miles perpendicular in height, and, at the parallel of
the Cape Verde Islands, an other wall not less considerable,
that encloses thus all the sunk continent of the Atlantic.
The bottom of this immense valley is dotted with some mountains,
that give to these submarine places a picturesque aspect.
I speak, moreover, from the manuscript charts that were in the library
of the Nautilus--charts evidently due to Captain Nemo's hand,
and made after his personal observations. For two days the desert
and deep waters were visited by means of the inclined planes.
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