Chapter 3

“‘Washish squashish squeak, Sinbad, hey-diddle diddle, grunt unt
grumble, hiss, fiss, whiss,’ said he to me, one day after
dinner—but I beg a thousand pardons, I had forgotten that your
majesty is not conversant with the dialect of the Cock-neighs (so
the man-animals were called; I presume because their language
formed the connecting link between that of the horse and that of
the rooster). With your permission, I will translate. ‘Washish
squashish,’ and so forth:—that is to say, ‘I am happy to find, my
dear Sinbad, that you are really a very excellent fellow; we are
now about doing a thing which is called circumnavigating the
globe; and since you are so desirous of seeing the world, I will
strain a point and give you a free passage upon back of the
beast.’”

When the Lady Scheherazade had proceeded thus far, relates the
“Isitsöornot,” the king turned over from his left side to his
right, and said:

“It is, in fact, very surprising, my dear queen, that you
omitted, hitherto, these latter adventures of Sinbad. Do you know
I think them exceedingly entertaining and strange?”

The king having thus expressed himself, we are told, the fair
Scheherazade resumed her history in the following words:

“Sinbad went on in this manner with his narrative—‘I thanked the
man-animal for its kindness, and soon found myself very much at
home on the beast, which swam at a prodigious rate through the
ocean; although the surface of the latter is, in that part of the
world, by no means flat, but round like a pomegranate, so that we
went—so to say—either up hill or down hill all the time.’

“That I think, was very singular,” interrupted the king.

“Nevertheless, it is quite true,” replied Scheherazade.

“I have my doubts,” rejoined the king; “but, pray, be so good as
to go on with the story.”

“I will,” said the queen. “‘The beast,’ continued Sinbad to the
caliph, ‘swam, as I have related, up hill and down hill until, at
length, we arrived at an island, many hundreds of miles in
circumference, but which, nevertheless, had been built in the
middle of the sea by a colony of little things like
caterpillars.’” (*1)

“Hum!” said the king.

“‘Leaving this island,’ said Sinbad—(for Scheherazade, it must be
understood, took no notice of her husband’s ill-mannered
ejaculation) ‘leaving this island, we came to another where the
forests were of solid stone, and so hard that they shivered to
pieces the finest-tempered axes with which we endeavoured to cut
them down.’” (*2)

“Hum!” said the king, again; but Scheherazade, paying him no
attention, continued in the language of Sinbad.

“‘Passing beyond this last island, we reached a country where
there was a cave that ran to the distance of thirty or forty
miles within the bowels of the earth, and that contained a
greater number of far more spacious and more magnificent palaces
than are to be found in all Damascus and Bagdad. From the roofs
of these palaces there hung myriads of gems, like diamonds, but
larger than men; and in among the streets of towers and pyramids
and temples, there flowed immense rivers as black as ebony, and
swarming with fish that had no eyes.’” (*3)

“Hum!” said the king.

“‘We then swam into a region of the sea where we found a lofty
mountain, down whose sides there streamed torrents of melted
metal, some of which were twelve miles wide and sixty miles long
(*4); while from an abyss on the summit, issued so vast a
quantity of ashes that the sun was entirely blotted out from the
heavens, and it became darker than the darkest midnight; so that
when we were even at the distance of a hundred and fifty miles
from the mountain, it was impossible to see the whitest object,
however close we held it to our eyes.’” (*5)

“Hum!” said the king.

“‘After quitting this coast, the beast continued his voyage until
we met with a land in which the nature of things seemed
reversed—for we here saw a great lake, at the bottom of which,
more than a hundred feet beneath the surface of the water, there
flourished in full leaf a forest of tall and luxuriant trees.’”
(*6)

“Hoo!” said the king.

“Some hundred miles farther on brought us to a climate where the
atmosphere was so dense as to sustain iron or steel, just as our
own does feather.’” (*7)

“Fiddle de dee,” said the king.

“Proceeding still in the same direction, we presently arrived at
the most magnificent region in the whole world. Through it there
meandered a glorious river for several thousands of miles. This
river was of unspeakable depth, and of a transparency richer than
that of amber. It was from three to six miles in width; and its
banks which arose on either side to twelve hundred feet in
perpendicular height, were crowned with ever-blossoming trees and
perpetual sweet-scented flowers, that made the whole territory
one gorgeous garden; but the name of this luxuriant land was the
Kingdom of Horror, and to enter it was inevitable death.’” (*8)

“Humph!” said the king.

“‘We left this kingdom in great haste, and, after some days, came
to another, where we were astonished to perceive myriads of
monstrous animals with horns resembling scythes upon their heads.
These hideous beasts dig for themselves vast caverns in the soil,
of a funnel shape, and line the sides of them with rocks, so
disposed one upon the other that they fall instantly, when
trodden upon by other animals, thus precipitating them into the
monster’s dens, where their blood is immediately sucked, and
their carcasses afterwards hurled contemptuously out to an
immense distance from “the caverns of death."’” (*9)

“Pooh!” said the king.

“‘Continuing our progress, we perceived a district with
vegetables that grew not upon any soil but in the air. (*10)
There were others that sprang from the substance of other
vegetables; (*11) others that derived their substance from the
bodies of living animals; (*12) and then again, there were others
that glowed all over with intense fire; (*13) others that moved
from place to place at pleasure, (*14) and what was still more
wonderful, we discovered flowers that lived and breathed and
moved their limbs at will and had, moreover, the detestable
passion of mankind for enslaving other creatures, and confining
them in horrid and solitary prisons until the fulfillment of
appointed tasks.’” (*15)

“Pshaw!” said the king.

“‘Quitting this land, we soon arrived at another in which the
bees and the birds are mathematicians of such genius and
erudition, that they give daily instructions in the science of
geometry to the wise men of the empire. The king of the place
having offered a reward for the solution of two very difficult
problems, they were solved upon the spot—the one by the bees, and
the other by the birds; but the king keeping their solution a
secret, it was only after the most profound researches and labor,
and the writing of an infinity of big books, during a long series
of years, that the men-mathematicians at length arrived at the
identical solutions which had been given upon the spot by the
bees and by the birds.’” (*16)

“Oh my!” said the king.

“‘We had scarcely lost sight of this empire when we found
ourselves close upon another, from whose shores there flew over
our heads a flock of fowls a mile in breadth, and two hundred and
forty miles long; so that, although they flew a mile during every
minute, it required no less than four hours for the whole flock
to pass over us—in which there were several millions of millions
of fowl.’” (*17)

“Oh fy!” said the king.

“‘No sooner had we got rid of these birds, which occasioned us
great annoyance, than we were terrified by the appearance of a
fowl of another kind, and infinitely larger than even the rocs
which I met in my former voyages; for it was bigger than the
biggest of the domes on your seraglio, oh, most Munificent of
Caliphs. This terrible fowl had no head that we could perceive,
but was fashioned entirely of belly, which was of a prodigious
fatness and roundness, of a soft-looking substance, smooth,
shining and striped with various colors. In its talons, the
monster was bearing away to his eyrie in the heavens, a house
from which it had knocked off the roof, and in the interior of
which we distinctly saw human beings, who, beyond doubt, were in
a state of frightful despair at the horrible fate which awaited
them. We shouted with all our might, in the hope of frightening
the bird into letting go of its prey, but it merely gave a snort
or puff, as if of rage and then let fall upon our heads a heavy
sack which proved to be filled with sand!’”

“Stuff!” said the king.

“‘It was just after this adventure that we encountered a
continent of immense extent and prodigious solidity, but which,
nevertheless, was supported entirely upon the back of a sky-blue
cow that had no fewer than four hundred horns.’” (*18)

“That, now, I believe,” said the king, “because I have read
something of the kind before, in a book.”

“‘We passed immediately beneath this continent, (swimming in
between the legs of the cow), and, after some hours, found
ourselves in a wonderful country indeed, which, I was informed by
the man-animal, was his own native land, inhabited by things of
his own species. This elevated the man-animal very much in my
esteem, and in fact, I now began to feel ashamed of the
contemptuous familiarity with which I had treated him; for I
found that the man-animals in general were a nation of the most
powerful magicians, who lived with worms in their brain, (*19)
which, no doubt, served to stimulate them by their painful
writhings and wrigglings to the most miraculous efforts of
imagination!’”

“Nonsense!” said the king.

“‘Among the magicians, were domesticated several animals of very
singular kinds; for example, there was a huge horse whose bones
were iron and whose blood was boiling water. In place of corn, he
had black stones for his usual food; and yet, in spite of so hard
a diet, he was so strong and swift that he would drag a load more
weighty than the grandest temple in this city, at a rate
surpassing that of the flight of most birds.’” (*20)

“Twattle!” said the king.

“‘I saw, also, among these people a hen without feathers, but
bigger than a camel; instead of flesh and bone she had iron and
brick; her blood, like that of the horse, (to whom, in fact, she
was nearly related,) was boiling water; and like him she ate
nothing but wood or black stones. This hen brought forth very
frequently, a hundred chickens in the day; and, after birth, they
took up their residence for several weeks within the stomach of
their mother.’” (*21)

“Fal lal!” said the king.

“‘One of this nation of mighty conjurors created a man out of
brass and wood, and leather, and endowed him with such ingenuity
that he would have beaten at chess, all the race of mankind with
the exception of the great Caliph, Haroun Alraschid. (*22)
Another of these magi constructed (of like material) a creature
that put to shame even the genius of him who made it; for so
great were its reasoning powers that, in a second, it performed
calculations of so vast an extent that they would have required
the united labor of fifty thousand fleshy men for a year. (*23)
But a still more wonderful conjuror fashioned for himself a
mighty thing that was neither man nor beast, but which had brains
of lead, intermixed with a black matter like pitch, and fingers
that it employed with such incredible speed and dexterity that it
would have had no trouble in writing out twenty thousand copies
of the Koran in an hour, and this with so exquisite a precision,
that in all the copies there should not be found one to vary from
another by the breadth of the finest hair. This thing was of
prodigious strength, so that it erected or overthrew the
mightiest empires at a breath; but its powers were exercised
equally for evil and for good.’”

“Ridiculous!” said the king.

“‘Among this nation of necromancers there was also one who had in
his veins the blood of the salamanders; for he made no scruple of
sitting down to smoke his chibouc in a red-hot oven until his
dinner was thoroughly roasted upon its floor. (*24) Another had
the faculty of converting the common metals into gold, without
even looking at them during the process. (*25) Another had such a
delicacy of touch that he made a wire so fine as to be invisible.
(*26) Another had such quickness of perception that he counted
all the separate motions of an elastic body, while it was
springing backward and forward at the rate of nine hundred
millions of times in a second.’” (*27)

“Absurd!” said the king.

“‘Another of these magicians, by means of a fluid that nobody
ever yet saw, could make the corpses of his friends brandish
their arms, kick out their legs, fight, or even get up and dance
at his will. (*28) Another had cultivated his voice to so great
an extent that he could have made himself heard from one end of
the world to the other. (*29) Another had so long an arm that he
could sit down in Damascus and indite a letter at Bagdad—or
indeed at any distance whatsoever. (*30) Another commanded the
lightning to come down to him out of the heavens, and it came at
his call; and served him for a plaything when it came. Another
took two loud sounds and out of them made a silence. Another
constructed a deep darkness out of two brilliant lights. (*31)
Another made ice in a red-hot furnace. (*32) Another directed the
sun to paint his portrait, and the sun did. (*33) Another took
this luminary with the moon and the planets, and having first
weighed them with scrupulous accuracy, probed into their depths
and found out the solidity of the substance of which they were
made. But the whole nation is, indeed, of so surprising a
necromantic ability, that not even their infants, nor their
commonest cats and dogs have any difficulty in seeing objects
that do not exist at all, or that for twenty millions of years
before the birth of the nation itself had been blotted out from
the face of creation.’” (*34)

“Preposterous!” said the king.

“‘The wives and daughters of these incomparably great and wise
magi,’” continued Scheherazade, without being in any manner
disturbed by these frequent and most ungentlemanly interruptions
on the part of her husband—“‘the wives and daughters of these
eminent conjurers are every thing that is accomplished and
refined; and would be every thing that is interesting and
beautiful, but for an unhappy fatality that besets them, and from
which not even the miraculous powers of their husbands and
fathers has, hitherto, been adequate to save. Some fatalities
come in certain shapes, and some in others—but this of which I
speak has come in the shape of a crotchet.’”

“A what?” said the king.

“‘A crotchet’” said Scheherazade. “‘One of the evil genii, who
are perpetually upon the watch to inflict ill, has put it into
the heads of these accomplished ladies that the thing which we
describe as personal beauty consists altogether in the
protuberance of the region which lies not very far below the
small of the back. Perfection of loveliness, they say, is in the
direct ratio of the extent of this lump. Having been long
possessed of this idea, and bolsters being cheap in that country,
the days have long gone by since it was possible to distinguish a
woman from a dromedary—’”

“Stop!” said the king—“I can’t stand that, and I won’t. You have
already given me a dreadful headache with your lies. The day,
too, I perceive, is beginning to break. How long have we been
married?—my conscience is getting to be troublesome again. And
then that dromedary touch—do you take me for a fool? Upon the
whole, you might as well get up and be throttled.”

These words, as I learn from the “Isitsöornot,” both grieved and
astonished Scheherazade; but, as she knew the king to be a man of
scrupulous integrity, and quite unlikely to forfeit his word, she
submitted to her fate with a good grace. She derived, however,
great consolation, (during the tightening of the bowstring,) from
the reflection that much of the history remained still untold,
and that the petulance of her brute of a husband had reaped for
him a most righteous reward, in depriving him of many
inconceivable adventures.

A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM.

The ways of God in Nature, as in Providence, are not as our ways;
nor are the models that we frame any way commensurate to the
vastness, profundity, and unsearchableness of His works, _which have
a depth in them greater than the well of Democritus_.

—_Joseph Glanville_.

We had now reached the summit of the loftiest crag. For some
minutes the old man seemed too much exhausted to speak.

“Not long ago,” said he at length, “and I could have guided you
on this route as well as the youngest of my sons; but, about
three years past, there happened to me an event such as never
happened to mortal man—or at least such as no man ever survived
to tell of—and the six hours of deadly terror which I then
endured have broken me up body and soul. You suppose me a _very_
old man—but I am not. It took less than a single day to change
these hairs from a jetty black to white, to weaken my limbs, and
to unstring my nerves, so that I tremble at the least exertion,
and am frightened at a shadow. Do you know I can scarcely look
over this little cliff without getting giddy?”

The “little cliff,” upon whose edge he had so carelessly thrown
himself down to rest that the weightier portion of his body hung
over it, while he was only kept from falling by the tenure of his
elbow on its extreme and slippery edge—this “little cliff” arose,
a sheer unobstructed precipice of black shining rock, some
fifteen or sixteen hundred feet from the world of crags beneath
us. Nothing would have tempted me to within half a dozen yards of
its brink. In truth so deeply was I excited by the perilous
position of my companion, that I fell at full length upon the
ground, clung to the shrubs around me, and dared not even glance
upward at the sky—while I struggled in vain to divest myself of
the idea that the very foundations of the mountain were in danger
from the fury of the winds. It was long before I could reason
myself into sufficient courage to sit up and look out into the
distance.

“You must get over these fancies,” said the guide, “for I have
brought you here that you might have the best possible view of
the scene of that event I mentioned—and to tell you the whole
story with the spot just under your eye.”

“We are now,” he continued, in that particularizing manner which
distinguished him—“we are now close upon the Norwegian coast—in
the sixty-eighth degree of latitude—in the great province of
Nordland—and in the dreary district of Lofoden. The mountain upon
whose top we sit is Helseggen, the Cloudy. Now raise yourself up
a little higher—hold on to the grass if you feel giddy—so—and
look out, beyond the belt of vapor beneath us, into the sea.”

I looked dizzily, and beheld a wide expanse of ocean, whose
waters wore so inky a hue as to bring at once to my mind the
Nubian geographer’s account of the _Mare Tenebrarum_. A panorama
more deplorably desolate no human imagination can conceive. To
the right and left, as far as the eye could reach, there lay
outstretched, like ramparts of the world, lines of horridly black
and beetling cliff, whose character of gloom was but the more
forcibly illustrated by the surf which reared high up against its
white and ghastly crest, howling and shrieking forever. Just
opposite the promontory upon whose apex we were placed, and at a
distance of some five or six miles out at sea, there was visible
a small, bleak-looking island; or, more properly, its position
was discernible through the wilderness of surge in which it was
enveloped. About two miles nearer the land, arose another of
smaller size, hideously craggy and barren, and encompassed at
various intervals by a cluster of dark rocks.

The appearance of the ocean, in the space between the more
distant island and the shore, had something very unusual about
it. Although, at the time, so strong a gale was blowing landward
that a brig in the remote offing lay to under a double-reefed
trysail, and constantly plunged her whole hull out of sight,
still there was here nothing like a regular swell, but only a
short, quick, angry cross dashing of water in every direction—as
well in the teeth of the wind as otherwise. Of foam there was
little except in the immediate vicinity of the rocks.

“The island in the distance,” resumed the old man, “is called by
the Norwegians Vurrgh. The one midway is Moskoe. That a mile to
the northward is Ambaaren. Yonder are Islesen, Hotholm,
Keildhelm, Suarven, and Buckholm. Farther off—between Moskoe and
Vurrgh—are Otterholm, Flimen, Sandflesen, and Stockholm. These
are the true names of the places—but why it has been thought
necessary to name them at all, is more than either you or I can
understand. Do you hear anything? Do you see any change in the
water?”

We had now been about ten minutes upon the top of Helseggen, to
which we had ascended from the interior of Lofoden, so that we
had caught no glimpse of the sea until it had burst upon us from
the summit. As the old man spoke, I became aware of a loud and
gradually increasing sound, like the moaning of a vast herd of
buffaloes upon an American prairie; and at the same moment I
perceived that what seamen term the _chopping_ character of the
ocean beneath us, was rapidly changing into a current which set
to the eastward. Even while I gazed, this current acquired a
monstrous velocity. Each moment added to its speed—to its
headlong impetuosity. In five minutes the whole sea, as far as
Vurrgh, was lashed into ungovernable fury; but it was between
Moskoe and the coast that the main uproar held its sway. Here the
vast bed of the waters, seamed and scarred into a thousand
conflicting channels, burst suddenly into phrensied
convulsion—heaving, boiling, hissing—gyrating in gigantic and
innumerable vortices, and all whirling and plunging on to the
eastward with a rapidity which water never elsewhere assumes
except in precipitous descents.

In a few minutes more, there came over the scene another radical
alteration. The general surface grew somewhat more smooth, and
the whirlpools, one by one, disappeared, while prodigious streaks
of foam became apparent where none had been seen before. These
streaks, at length, spreading out to a great distance, and
entering into combination, took unto themselves the gyratory
motion of the subsided vortices, and seemed to form the germ of
another more vast. Suddenly—very suddenly—this assumed a distinct
and definite existence, in a circle of more than a mile in
diameter. The edge of the whirl was represented by a broad belt
of gleaming spray; but no particle of this slipped into the mouth
of the terrific funnel, whose interior, as far as the eye could
fathom it, was a smooth, shining, and jet-black wall of water,
inclined to the horizon at an angle of some forty-five degrees,
speeding dizzily round and round with a swaying and sweltering
motion, and sending forth to the winds an appalling voice, half
shriek, half roar, such as not even the mighty cataract of
Niagara ever lifts up in its agony to Heaven.

The mountain trembled to its very base, and the rock rocked. I
threw myself upon my face, and clung to the scant herbage in an
excess of nervous agitation.

“This,” said I at length, to the old man—“this _can_ be nothing
else than the great whirlpool of the Maelström.”

“So it is sometimes termed,” said he. “We Norwegians call it the
Moskoe-ström, from the island of Moskoe in the midway.”

The ordinary accounts of this vortex had by no means prepared me
for what I saw. That of Jonas Ramus, which is perhaps the most
circumstantial of any, cannot impart the faintest conception
either of the magnificence, or of the horror of the scene—or of
the wild bewildering sense of _the novel_ which confounds the
beholder. I am not sure from what point of view the writer in
question surveyed it, nor at what time; but it could neither have
been from the summit of Helseggen, nor during a storm. There are
some passages of his description, nevertheless, which may be
quoted for their details, although their effect is exceedingly
feeble in conveying an impression of the spectacle.

“Between Lofoden and Moskoe,” he says, “the depth of the water is
between thirty-six and forty fathoms; but on the other side,
toward Ver (Vurrgh) this depth decreases so as not to afford a
convenient passage for a vessel, without the risk of splitting on
the 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 equalled 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 tranquility 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. 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-ström 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 which
is sufficiently known by lesser experiments.”—These are the words
of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Kircher and others imagine that
in the centre of the channel of the Maelström 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.