52 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEa. 
A similar phenomenon is exhibited on the south side of the 
Mauritius, at a point called “ The Souffleur,” or “* The Blower.” 
“A large mass of rock,” says Lieutenant Taylor,* “runs out 
into the sea from the mainland, to which it is jomed by a neck 
of rock not two feet broad. The constant beating of the tre- 
mendous swell, which rolls in, has undermined it in every direc- 
tion, till it has exactly the appearance of a Gothic building with 
a number of arches. In the centre of the rock, which is about 
thirty-five or forty feet above the sea, the water has forced two 
passages vertically upwards, which are worn as smooth and 
cylindrical as if cut by a chisel. When a heavy sea rolls in, 
it of course fills in an instant the hollow caverns underneath, 
and finding no other egress, and being borne in with tremen- 
lous violence, it rushes up these chimneys and flies, roaring 
furiously, to a height of full sixty feet. The moment the wave 
recedes, the vacuum beneath causes the wind to rush into the 
two apertures with a loud humming noise, which is heard at 
a considerable distance. My companion and I arrived there 
before high water, and, having climbed across the neck of rock, 
we seated ourselves close to the chimneys, where I proposed 
making a sketch, and had just begun when in came a thunder- 
ing sea, which broke right over the rock itself and drove us 
back much alarmed. 
“Our negro guide now informed us that we must make haste 
to recross our narrow bridge, as the sea would get up as the 
tide rose. We lost no time and got back dry enough; and I 
was obliged to make my sketches from the mainland. In about 
three-quarters of an hour the sight was truly magnificent. I 
do not exaggerate in the least when I say that the waves rolled 
in, long and unbroken, full twenty-five feet high, till, meeting the 
headland, they broke clear over it, sending the spray flying over 
to the mainland; while from the centre of this mass of foam, 
the Souffleur shot up with a noise, which we afterwards heard 
distinctly between two and three miles. Standing on the main 
cliff, more than a hundred feet above the sea, we were quite 
wet. All we wanted to complete the picture was a large ship 
going ashore.” 
A similar phenomenon, on a still more grand and majestic 
scale, occurs near Huatulco, a small Mexican village on the 
* Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, vol. ili. 1833. 
