and are overpowered by
its violence; and then it is impossible to describe their howlings and
bellowings in their fruitless struggles to disengage themselves. A
bear once, attempting to swim from Lofoden to Moskoe, was caught by the
stream and borne down, while he roared terribly, so as to be heard on
shore. Large stocks of firs and pine trees, after being absorbed by the
current, rise again broken and torn to such a degree as if bristles grew
upon them. This plainly shows the bottom to consist of craggy rocks,
among which they are whirled to and fro. This stream is regulated by the
flux and reflux of the sea--it being constantly high and low water every
six hours. In the year 1645, early in the morning of Sexagesima Sunday,
it raged with such noise and impetuosity that the very stones of the
houses on the coast fell to the ground."

In regard to the depth of the water, I could not see how this could have
been ascertained at all in the immediate vicinity of the vortex. The
"forty fathoms" must have reference only to portions of the channel
close upon the shore either of Moskoe or Lofoden. The depth in the
centre of the Moskoe-stroem must be immeasurably greater; and no better
proof of this fact is necessary than can be obtained from even the
sidelong glance into the abyss of the whirl which may be had from the
highest crag of Helseggen. Looking down from this pinnacle upon the
howling Phlegethon below, I could not help smiling at the simplicity
with which the honest Jonas Ramus records, as a matter difficult of
belief, the anecdotes of the whales and the bears; for it appeared to
me, in fact, a self-evident thing, that the largest ship of the line in
existence, coming within the influence of that deadly attraction, could
resist it as little as a feather the hurricane, and must disappear
bodily and at once.

The attempts to account for the phenomenon--some of which, I remember,
seemed to me sufficiently plausible in perusal--now wore a very
different and unsatisfactory aspect. The idea generally received is that
this, as well as three smaller vortices among the Ferroe islands, "have
no other cause than the collision of waves rising and falling, at flux
and reflux, against a ridge of rocks and shelves, which confines the
water so that it precipitates itself like a cataract; and thus the
higher the flood rises, the deeper must the fall be, and the natural
result of all is a whirlpool or vortex, the prodigious suction of