“ Now from the left approaching, we descry 
“ A liquid column towering shoot on high ; 
“ Its foaming base an angry whirlwind sweeps, 
“ Where curling billows rouse the fearful deeps! 
“ Still round and round the fluid vortex flies, 
“ Scattering dun night and horror through the skies! 
“ The swift volution, and th’ enormous train, 
“ Let sages vers’d in nature’s lore explain. 
f< The horrid apparition still draws nigh, 
“ And white with foam the whirling surges fly. 
“ The guns were prim’d, the vessel northward nears 
“ ’Till her black battery on the column bears ; 
“ The nitre fir’d, and while the dreadful sound 
“ Convulsive shook the slumbering air around; 
“ The watery volume, towering to the sky, 
“ Burst down, a dreadful deluge from on high! 
“ Th’ affrighted surge, recoiling as it fell, 
“ Rolling in hills, disclos’d the abyss of hell!” 
A pleasant land-breeze wafted us from Onore, to the fortress 
called the Malabar Frontier; where we properly entered on the 
Malabar coast: we anchored the same evening at Mangulore, in 
12° 50' north latitude, and 74° 44' east longitude. It was then the 
well 
situated for commerce, and frequented by foreign merchants for 
pepper, sandal-wood, rice, and betel-nuts. 
The entrance into the river, or rather a salt-water lake, near 
which the town was built, is difficult and dangerous, occasioned 
by a rapid current running into the sea, through a narrow channel 
in the sandy beach, which extends along the coast: this entrance 
was defended by batteries; the principal fortress stood on the 
opposite side of the river, near a populous town; the houses were 
