52 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OP TnE SEA. 



A similar phenomenon 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,* " runs out 

 into the sea from the mainland, to which it is joined by a neck 

 of rock not two feet broad. The constant beating of the tre- 

 mendous swell, which rolls in, has undermined it in every direc- 

 tion, 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 upwards, 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 tremen- 

 dous violence, it 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 propose' 1 

 making a sketch, and had just begun when in came a thunder- 

 ing 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 recross 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 that 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 Souffleur 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. All we wanted to complete the picture was a large ship 

 going ashore.'' 



A similar phenomenon, on a still more grand and majestic 

 scale, occurs near Huatulco, a small Mexican village on the 

 * Journal of the Eoyal Geographical Society of London, voL iii. 1833. 



