For steamers and large boats there is not the slightest danger, but to the native in his little sacayan with its bamboo outriggers these whirlpools are objects of dread and fear.

By degrees I had created within and around me a new world of interest and activity, in which this little whirlpool of morbid feeling became an insignificant point.

The popular tradition is that this whirlpool is the abode of a very malicious and spiteful Wassernixe, Undine or Water Goblin, who delighted in drowning passengers.

Whirlpools were holes in the floor of the upper river, so to speak; eddies were rifts and cracks.