e rocks, which happens even in the
calmest weather.

"When it is flood, the stream runs up the country between Lofoden and
Moskoe with a boisterous rapidity; but the roar of its impetuous ebb to
the sea is scarce equaled by the loudest and most dreadful cataracts--the
noise being heard several leagues off; and the vortices or pits are of
such an extent and depth that if a ship comes within its attraction it is
inevitably absorbed and carried down to the bottom, and there beat to
pieces against the rocks; and when the water relaxes the fragments thereof
are thrown up again.

"But these intervals of tranquillity are only at the turn of the ebb and
flood, and in calm weather, and last but a quarter of an hour, its
violence gradually returning. When the stream is most boisterous, and its
fury heightened by a storm, it is dangerous to come within a Norway mile
of it.

"Boats, yachts, and ships have been carried away by not guarding against
it before they were within its reach. It likewise happens frequently that
whales come too near the stream 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."

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 center of the Moskoe-stroem must be unmeasurably
greater.... 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 a self-evident thing that the
largest ships 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.

"You have had a good look at