THE MAELSTROM. 95 



character of the whirlpool. The slope of the sides of the vast funnel became momentarily less 

 and less steep. The gyrations of the whirl grew gradually less and less violent." By degrees 

 the waters rose, and he found himself in full view of the shores of Lofoden, and above the spot 

 where the pool of the moskoe-strom had been. He was picked up by a boat ; those on board 

 were old mates and daily companions, but they knew him no more than they would have 

 known a traveller from the spirit-land. His hair, which had been raven black the day before, 

 was now as white as snow. 



Thus far Poe. It shows how the vivid imagination of a great poet, dealing with facts, 

 can put those facts before the reader in artistically life-like and graphic form. 



Another remarkable whirlpool is that of Corrievreckan, off the Hebrides, in the south 

 of Scotland, shown in an illustration on page 93. 



A phenomenon of another character 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, of the United States navy, <: runs out into the sea from the mainland, 

 to \vhich it is joined by a neck of rock not two feet broad. The constant beating of the 

 tremendous swell which rolls in has undermined it in every direction, 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 upward, 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 tremendous violence, 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 thundering 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 re-cross 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 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 Soufflcur 

 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." 



To the combined influences of tides and waves may also be attributed the monsoon 

 hurricanes which so often visit the Indian Ocean. The air may have been just previously 

 without a breath, when immense waves, accompanied by whirlwinds, come rolling in. "At 

 the period of the changing monsoons, the winds, breaking loose from their controlling 

 forces, seem to rage with a fury capable of breaking up the very foundations of the deep," and 

 ships are often literally whirled round, or bodily lifted up, their crews being utterly impotent. 



