50 NOTES ON THE KUBIL ISLANDS. 



it is impossible for a boat to live in them, and a sailing vessel 

 requires a fresh breeze in order to keep steerage way and get 

 through. With but a light breeze, a vessel's sails and rudder are 

 but of little use to her, for she is carried along hither and thither 

 by the current, whirled round and round, utterly helpless, in 

 one of these seething, swirling, roaring rips. Fortunately, the 

 tendency is to set the shij) away from the shore rather than 

 towards it. 



Navigating-Lieutenant Neville, in the *' China Sea Directory," 

 has the following note on one of these tide-rips : " H.M.S. Cormorant 

 made for this channel (Pico or Kunashir Strait), but, when close 

 to, observed a line of heavy breakers extending right across. She 

 then stood nearer the island of Eturup, in the hopes of finding 

 a passage, but in vain. Night coming on, it was not possible to 

 verify the fact of its being shoal, but the sea broke perpendicularly 

 20 to 25 feet high, and unlike any tide-ripple." 



This, however, was a tide-rip. There is no shoal, but a con- 

 siderable depth of water in this strait. 



These rips, although they sometimes extend a considerable 

 distance, are, as a rule, not very wide. The sea on both sides may 

 be perfectly smooth, whilst in the rip, especially at its edge, it is 

 thrown into boiling, foaming, swirling waves and breakers, rising in 

 short high seas from every direction. 



The nearer the rip, the greater appears to be the strength of the 

 stream. On several occasions the writer has had the greatest 

 difficulty in avoiding being drawn into these rips, after having 

 approached nearer than was prudent, in a fast hunting-boat pulling 

 tive oars and a paddle. 



These rips are usually at their worst about the time of new 

 and full moon, and after easterly and north-easterly winds. They 

 are always intensified where a current of considerable depth strikes 

 a shoal or ledge with abrupt sides, and at the same time meets 

 with a cross-current, as oft" both ends of Urup, in Srednoi Strait, 

 and in other places. 



Several hunting-boats have been capsized in these rips, and all 

 hands drowned. 



Currents. — The Oya Shiwo, which is the Arctic current, sets 

 along the east coast of Kamchatka and down the Pacific side of 

 the Kuril Islands, then along the south-east coast of Yezo, and 



