62 The Sea 
whelms the river current and there is a great surge of water 
up the river in the form of a single large wave, behind which 
the water is several feet higher. Such a solitary wave is called 
a bore. Some bores are as high as 8 to 12 feet and are accom- 
panied by a rushing noise which can be heard many miles 
away. 
WHIRLPOOLS 
The danger of whirlpools has been much exaggerated, par- 
ticularly that of the Maelstrom, between the islands of Mos- 
kenaes and Mosken in the Lofoten Islands off the west coast 
of Norway. Although dangerous for small boats, whirlpools 
are not the terrors usually painted by imaginative writers. An 
example of such overstatement is found in Edgar Allan Poe’s 
Descent into the Maelstrom: 
“Never shall I forget the sensation of awe, horror, and 
admiration with which I gazed about me. The boat appeared 
to be hanging, as if by magic, midway down, upon the in- 
terior surface of a funnel vast in circumference, prodigious 
in depth, and whose perfectly smooth sides might have been 
mistaken for ebony, but for the bewildering rapidity with 
which they spun around, and for the gleaming ghostly radi- 
ance they shot forth, as the rays of the full moon streamed in 
a flood of golden glory along the black walls, and far away 
down into the inmost recesses of the abyss.” 
Similarly the terrors of the Straits of Messina, the Charyb- 
dis and Scylla, the frightful whirlpools of Homer and Virgil, 
are hardly even noticed by the captains of today. 
