Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

As in the sea between Scylla and
Charybdis the helmsman is ever in danger,
yet he will be thought shrewd and
sagacious, if, keeping his ship on a straight
course between the two, avoiding the rocks
on the one side and the maelstrom on the
other, he brings his ship safely to harbour.
Carlo Vitali, Dichiarazione dell'Impresa
Generale della nuova Accademia Peloritana
detta de' Pericolanti (1729)
Chapter 15 -- The Maelstrom
Odysseus' encounter with Cyclops corresponds with an ancient Norse “kenningar” tale.
Sorceress Circe's island, where there is a midnight sun and revolving dawns, speaks of northern
latitudes. As the cacophony of Moskenstrom backwash on half-hidden rocks could deceive
sailors that land is at hand, the Sirens could be Lofoten shoals made even more dangerous by
fog and tide. South of Homer's Charybdis stands the island Thrinakia (“trident”). Mosken Island
is three-tipped.
It indeed seems that a portion of Greek lore was drawn from locales far from Greece.
The eighth-century German, Paulus Warnefridi alluded to legend that there lies to the north a
"very deep abyss of the waters which we call the ocean's navel. It is said twice a day to suck the
waves into itself and spew them out again."
By the 16th century, the Moskenstrom was known to mapmakers.
Gerardus Mercator (1512-1594)
made his livelihood as a craftsman
of mathematical instruments and
an engraver of brass plates. He is
best remembered, however, as a
mapmaker.
The Arctic map, the first ever of
that region, was published a year
after his death. At the center lies
"Rupes nigra et altissima," a "very
high black rock."
Why would such a rock be there?
As all seamen know, the needle of
a compass is drawn by lodestone.
The map failed to show the Moskenstrom, but in a 1577 letter to English astrologer John Dee, the
geographer placed both polar singularities -- the loadstone and the whirlpool -- at 90 degrees
latitude.
In the midst of the four countries is a Whirlpool... into which there empty these four indrawing
Seas which divide the North. And the water rushes round and descends into the earth just as if
one were pouring it through a filter funnel. It is four degrees wide on every side of the Pole,
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