A CLOSE LOOK AT A WHIRLPOOL.

Bruce Herald, Volume XXXXIV, Issue 58, 25 June 1908, Page 7

A CLOSE LOOK AT A WHIRLPOOL.

The Gulf of Coirebhreacain is between the Scottish islands of Jura and Scarba. The tide runs through the passage at twelve or fourteen miles an hour. The whirlpool is the result -of the north and west tides meeting over a pyramidal rock rising from the bottom to within some fathoms of the surface. I saw it in July, 1907, at its best, at flow-tide. Huge openings formed in the water, and into these immense bodies of water tumbled in headlong cascades, rebounding again from the Vortex, dashing together, and rising high above the surrounding surface in a seething mass which scattered itself in whirling eddies of great size all round. These again drew in, met, and were drawn down in the immense gulf, which again opened and received another volume of water. Wreckage drawn into the whirlpool is forced to the bottom and then thrown out in very small pieces. The Gaelic name, which is seldom spelt correctly, means the "spotted corrie." The water surrounding the gulf is comparatively smootli, and of a dark color. The whirlpools thrown out over this are a frothy pale green, connected with each other by trailing lines of foam, which the eddies form into all imaginable shapes, thus giving the strait, when looked at from above, a spotted appearance. You have probably read the legend of the hero and the frail maiden which is said to have originated the name. I rowed twenty-two miles to see the gulf, and got my boat nearer than any other had ever ventured. ' The water is-smooth for half an hour at slack-water. I followed the tides and eddies by chart, and, by catching favorable eddies, got in and out of the strait without mishap between two tides. The roar of the whirlpool is distinctly heard from eight or ten miles distant.—A Scott Rankin, in 'Young England.'