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.

TALES OF PSEUDO-SCIENCE

unsatisfactory aspect. The idea generally received is
that this, as well as three smaller vortices among the
Feroe 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 which is sufficiently
known by lesser experiments." - These are the words
of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica." Kircher and
others imagine that in the centre of the channel of
the Maelstr6m is an abyss penetrating the globe, and
issuing in some very remote part - the Gulf of Bothnia being somewhat decidedly named in one instance.
This opinion, idle in itself, was the one to which, as
I gazed, my imagination most readily assented; and,
mentioning it to the guide, I was rather surprised to
hear him say that, although it was the view almost
universally entertained of the subject by the Norwegians, it nevertheless was not his own. As to the
former notion he confessed his inability to comprehend it; and here I agreed with him -for, however
conclusive on paper, it becomes altogether unintelligible, and even absurd, amid the thunder of the abyss.
"You have had a good look at the whirl now," said
the old man, "and if you will creep round this crag,
so as to get in its lee, and deaden the roar of the
water, I will tell you a story that will convince you I
ought to know something of the Moskoe-str6m."
I placed myself as desired, and he proceeded.
"Myself and my two brothers once owned a schoonerrigged smack of about seventy tons burden, with which
we were in the habit of fishing among the islands be244