WHIRLPOOLS AND EDDIES. 39 
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 mountain waves placed between 
two ships conceals each of them from the other—an effect which is 
partially represented in Fig. 7. In rounding 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 Eddystone Lighthouse, the spray 
goes right over the building, which stands 130 feet above the sea, and 
falls in torrents on the roof. After the storm of Barbadoes, in 1780, 
some old guns were found on the shore, which had been thrown up 
from the bottom of the sea by the force of the tempest. 
If the waves, in their reflux, meet with obstacles, whirlpools and 
whirlwinds are the result—the former the terror of navigators. Such 
are the whirlpools known in the Straits of Messina, between the 
rocks of Charybdis and Scylla, celebrated as the terror of ancient 
mariners, and which were sung by Homer, Ovid, and Virgil :— 
“*Scylla latus dextrum, laevum irrequieta Charybdis, 
Infestat ; vorat heec raptis revomitque carinas. 
* % % * * * * 
Incidit in Scyllam, cupiens vitare Charybdim.” 
These rocks are better understood and less feared in our days. At 
Charybdis there is a foaming whirlpool; at Scylla the waves dash 
against the low wall of rock which forms the promontory, and are 
scarcely noticed by the navigator of our days. 
Another celebrated whirlpool is that of Euripus, near the Island 
of Eubcea ; another is known in the Gulf of Bothnia. But perhaps 
the best known whirlpool is the Maelstrom, whose waters have a 
gyratory movement, producing a whirlpool at certain states of the 
tide, the result of opposing currents, which change every six hours, 
and which, from its power and magnitude, was at one time thought 
capable of attracting and engulfing ships to their destruction, although 
it is now known not to be dangerous even to very small craft. ; 
To the combined effects of tides and cyclones may also be attri- 
buted the hurricanes, so dreaded by navigators, which so frequently 
visit the Mauritius and other parts of the Indian Ocean. In periods 
of the utmost calm, when there is scarcely a breath to ruffle the air, 
these shores are sometimes visited by immense waves, accompanied 
