These rocks are better understood, and less redoubted 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, scarcely noticed by the navigator of our days.
Another celebrated whirlpool is that of Euripus, near the Island of Eubœa; another is known in the Gulf of Bothnia. But perhaps the best known rocky danger is the Maelström, 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, is capable of attracting and engulfing ships to their destruction, although chiefly dangerous to smaller craft.
To the combined effects of tides and whirlpools may also be attributed the hurricanes, so dreaded by navigators, which so frequently visit the Mauritius and other parts of the Indian Ocean. In periods of the utmost calms, when there is scarcely a breath to ruffle the air, these shores are sometimes visited by immense waves, accompanied by whirlwinds, which seem capable of blowing the ships out of the water, seizing them by the keel, whirling them round on an axis, and finally capsizing them. "At the period of the changing monsoon, the winds, breaking loose from their controlling forces, seem to rage with a fury capable of breaking up the very fountains of the deep."
The hurricanes of the Atlantic occur in the months of August and September, while the south-west monsoon of Africa and the southeast monsoon of the West Indies are at their height; the agents of the one drawing the north-east trade-winds into the interior of Mexico and Texas, the other drawing them into the interior of Africa, greatly disturbing the equilibrium of the atmosphere.
The Polar Seas.
The extreme columns of the known world are Mount Parry, situated at eight degrees from the North Pole, and Mount Ross, twelve degrees from the South Pole. Beyond these limits our maps are mute; a blank space marks each extremity of the terrestrial axis. Will man ever succeed in passing these icy barriers? Will he ever justify the prediction of the poet Seneca, who tells us that "the time will come in the distant future when Ocean will relax her hold on the world, when the immense earth will be open, when Tethys will appear amid new orbs, and where Thule (Iceland) shall no longer be the extreme limit of the earth?"
"Venient annis
Sæcula seris quibus oceanus
Vincula rerum laxet et ingens