The works of Edgar Allan Poe; newly collected and edited, with a memoir, critical introductions, and notes, by Edmund Clarence Stedman and George Edward Woodberry; the illustrations by Albert Edward Sterner.

A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM
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 I645, 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 Moskoestr6m 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 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.
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
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