One of the small brigs, attending the expedition, was dispatched without loss of time to the port of _Chu-san_, to take on board the pilots that, agreeable to the order contained in the Imperial edict, were expected to be found in readiness to embark. In some of the passages, formed by the numerous islands, the currents ran with amazing rapidity, appearing more like the impetuous torrents of rivers, swelled by rains, than branches of the great ocean. The depth too of these narrow passages was so great as to make it difficult, dangerous, and frequently impossible, for ships to anchor in the event of a calm; in which case they must necessarily drive at the mercy of the stream. As we approached, in the Clarence brig, the high rocky point of the continent called _Kee-too_, which juts into the midst of the cluster of islands, the wind suddenly failed us; and the current hurried us with such velocity directly towards the point, that we expected momentarily to be dashed in pieces; but on coming within twice the length of the ship of the perpendicular precipice, which was some hundred feet high, the eddy swept her round three several times with great rapidity. The Captain would have dropped the anchor, but an old Chinese fisherman, whom we had taken on board to pilot us, made signs that it was too deep, and, at the same time, that there was no danger, except that of the bowsprit striking against the mountain. The Chinese vessels have no bowsprit. At this moment the lead was thrown, but we got no soundings at the depth of one hundred and twenty fathoms; yet the yellow mud was brought up from the bottom in such quantities, that the Nile, at the height of its inundations, or the great Yellow River of China, could not be more loaded with mud than the sea was in the whirlpool of _Kee-too_ point. The current, in the Strait of Faro, setting directly upon the rocks of Scylla, and the whirlpool of Charybdis, those celebrated objects of dread to ancient navigators, could not possibly have been more awfully terrific, though perhaps more dangerous, than the currents and the eddies that boiled tumultuously round this promontory of the Chinese continent, where, "When the tide rushes from her rumbling caves The rough rock roars, tumultuous boil the waves; They toss, they foam, a wild confusion raise, Like waters bubbling o'er the fiery blaze."