368 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



opposite coast of Sicily there are numerous and variable currents. The centre of the 

 channel is occupied by a stream, which runs alternately north and south, six hours each 

 way, at the rate of from two to five miles an hour. On each side there is a counter or 

 returning stream, running at a varying distance from the beach, and numerous eddies 

 or whirlpools are formed by the contact of the lateral and central currents. In rough 

 weather, when a high wind is blowing in the direction of the main stream, it becomes 

 sufficiently powerful to stop the course of the lateral currents, but the collision gives rise 

 to strong whirls in the water, which are sent off to each shore. It is easy to conceive, 

 that to the inexpert mariners of ancient times, such a navigation would be alarming in 

 dark, rainy, blustering nights, and would often involve the wreck of their feeble craft, 

 disasters upon which the poets seized, and magnified the causes beyond the reality. At the 

 same time, it is not improbable, that the physical paroxysms to which the adjacent districts 

 have been subject, may have so altered the bottom of the straits, either by elevation or 

 depression, as to have really diminished the danger of the passage. During the great 

 Calabrian earthquake, the quay of Messina sank fourteen inches, vast masses of sea-cliff 

 on the coast of the straits fell down, and one such mass, detached from Mount Jaci 

 beside the rock of Scylla, rolled by night to the margin of the Mediterranean, which im 

 mediately rose with a wave twenty feet high. 



" I first," says the Abbe Spallanzani, " proceeded in a small boat to Scylla. This is a 

 lofty rock which rises almost perpendicularly from the sea, on the shore of Calabria, and 

 beyond which is the small city of the same name. Though there was scarcely any wind, 

 I began to hear, two miles before I came to the rock, a murmur and a noise, like a 

 confused barking of dogs, and on a nearer approach readily discovered the cause. This 

 rock in its lower part contains a number of caverns ; one of the largest of which is called 

 by the people there, Dragara. The waves, when in the least agitated, rushing into these 

 caverns, break, dash, throw up frothy bubbles, and thus occasion these various and mul 

 tiplied sounds. Such is the situation and appearance of Scylla : let us now consider the 

 danger it occasions to mariners. Though the tide is almost imperceptible in the open 

 parts of the Mediterranean, it is very strong in the Strait of Messina, in consequence of 

 the narrowness of the channel, and it is regulated, as in other places, by the periodical 

 elevations and depressions of the water. Where the flow or current is accompanied by a 

 wind blowing the same way, vessels have nothing to fear ; since they either do not enter 

 the Strait, both the wind and the stream opposing them, but cast anchor at the entrance ; or, 

 if both are favourable, they enter on full sail, and pass through with such rapidity that they 

 seem to fly over the water. But when the current runs from south to north, and the north 

 wind blows hard at the same time, the ship, which expected easily to pass the Strait with 

 the wind in its stern, on its entering the channel is resisted by the opposite current, and, 

 impelled by two forces in contrary directions, is at length dashed on the rock of Scylla, 

 or driven on the neighbouring sands; unless the pilot shall apply for the succour necessary 

 to his preservation. For to give assistance in case of such accidents, four and twenty of 

 the strongest, boldest, and most experienced sailors, well acquainted with the place, are 

 stationed night and day along the shore of Messina, who, at the report of guns fired as 

 signals of distress from any vessel, hasten to its assistance, and tow it with one of their 

 light boats." 



The site of Charybdis is defined by Strabo, "in the strait, a little before we reach the 

 city" Messina. It is off the entrance of the harbour, distant about 6047 yards from 

 Scylla, according to the measurement of Admiral Smyth, and about 700 feet from the 

 shore, upon a promontory of which a lighthouse warns the sailor by night of the spot. 

 The classical name is no longer its local title, but Kalofaro, from Ka\og and 0apoc, the 

 "beautiful tower," alluding to the lighthouse. It is not a vortex of the ordinary kind, 



