PERILS OF THE DEEP.

WHEN we see a large ship of war at anchor in the smooth water of a harbor, or river, and gaze upward at the huge hull whose bulging sides, serried with grim cannon, rise like an overhanging mountain above the tiny boat in which we steal timidly beneath her dark shadow, our first thought is, that it must be impossible for any waves, however stormy, materially to affect the security and equilibrium of so vast a mass :-our second recalls to mind the "ower true tale" of many a vessel as gallant and as majestic, utterly shipwrecked, and bids us shrink at the might of those winds and waves which can toss in wild play and dash to atoms the mightiest work of man, as if it were but a light seaweed on the raging foam.

There she lies, as if imbedded firmly as a rock, motionless in the clear fluid which gently heaves and ripples around her: her tall masts, with all their " tracery" of spars and cordage, shooting erect and fair into the sky :and to a landsman it requires an effort of thought to picture that which now appears the very image of magnifi

cent repose, of immoveable stability, transformed into a shattered wreck, "driven by the wind and tossed,"plunging and heaving, with restless struggling, amidst opposing billows, the veriest toy for the sport of old ocean, in his wildest freaks.

"They that go down to the sea in ships,-that do business in great waters,-these see the works of the Lord and His wonders in the deep.”

Among the many perils of the sea, one of the most remarkable and uncommon is the subject of the annexed cut, which is intended to represent the Maelstroom, a fearful whirlpool which exists south of the Loffoden Isles, off the rocky and deeply-indented coast of Norway. Various speculations have been entered into as to the cause of this extraordinary whirlpool, and some have gone so far as to account for it by imagining the existence of a vast hollow at the bottom of this part of the ocean, by which the waters of the Northern Ocean have a subterranean communication with the Baltic sea on the other side of Norway. Its existence, however, appears to be sufficiently accounted for without resorting to so extraordinary a notion as this; and there is no doubt that the extent and violence of this whirlpool, like those of Scylla and Charybdis in ancient times, have been somewhat ex

aggerated: or rather, perhaps, that to the smaller vessel and less skilful mariners of former ages the danger was much greater than it is to modern navigators.

The force of the Maelstroom increases and diminishes with the changes of the tides, and the simple fact appears to be, that at this part of the ocean two tides, flowing in different directions, meet twice during the twenty-four hours, and by their meeting, in a part hemmed in as it were by the direction and shape of the islands and mainland of this part of Norway, the waters are whirled round with great rapidity, and, as in all similar circumstances, they are heaped up at the circumference of the whirlpool and depressed into a hollow at its centre, until it really has the appearance of being sucked in, and disappearing through some abyss.

A somewhat similar effect, but to a much less extent, is produced by the same cause off the Isle of Portland, on the south coast of England. It is there called" the Race of Portland," and vessels guided by inexperienced or unwatchful steersmen may get drawn in and dashed upon the shore, beyond the possibility of escape, by the mere force of the whirling current, caused by one tide rolling up the channel from the Atlantic, meeting another tide rushing from the North Sea through the Straits of Dover.