WHIRLPOOLS AND EDDIES. 



41 



them. They run high and fast, tossing their white caps aloft in the 

 air, looking like the green hills of a rolling prairie capped with snow, 

 and chasing each other in sport. Still, their march is stately, and 

 their roll majestic. The scenery among them is grand. Many an 

 Australian-bound trader, after doubling the Cape, finds herself followed 

 for weeks at a time by these magnificent rolling swells, furiously 

 driven and lashed by the " brave west winds." These billows are said 

 to attain the height of thirty, and even forty feet ; but no very exact 

 measurement of the height of waves is recorded. One of these moun- 

 tain waves placed between two ships conceals each of them from the 



Fig. 8. Height of Waves off the Cape of Good Hope. 



other an effect which is partially represented in Fig. 8. In round- 

 ing Cape Horn, waves are encountered from twenty to thirty feet 

 high ; but in the Channel they rarely exceed the height of nine or ten 

 feet, except when they come in contact with some powerful resisting 

 obstacle. Thus, when billows are dashed violently against the Eddy- 

 stone Lighthouse, the spray goes right over the building, which stands 

 a hundred and thirty feet above the sea, and falls in torrents on the 

 roof. After the storm of Barbadoes in 1780, some old guns were 



