its back, raised the ship three feet at least out of the water. The
masts reeled, and the sails fell altogether, while we who were below
all sprang instantly upon the deck, concluding that we had struck
upon some rock; instead of this we saw the monster sailing off with
the utmost gravity and solemnity. Captain D'Wolf applied immediately
to the pumps to examine whether or not the vessel had received any
damage from the shock, but we found that very happily it had escaped
entirely uninjured."

Now, the Captain D'Wolf here alluded to as commanding the ship in
question, is a New Englander, who, after a long life of unusual
adventures as a sea-captain, this day resides in the village of
Dorchester near Boston. I have the honour of being a nephew of his.
I have particularly questioned him concerning this passage in
Langsdorff. He substantiates every word. The ship, however, was by
no means a large one: a Russian craft built on the Siberian coast,
and purchased by my uncle after bartering away the vessel in which he
sailed from home.

In that up and down manly book of old-fashioned adventure, so full,
too, of honest wonders--the voyage of Lionel Wafer, one of ancient
Dampier's old chums--I found a little matter set down so like that
just quoted from Langsdorff, that I cannot forbear inserting it here
for a corroborative example, if such be needed.

Lionel, it seems, was on his way to "John Ferdinando," as he calls
the modern Juan Fernandes. "In our way thither," he says, "about
four o'clock in the morning, when we were about one hundred and fifty
leagues from the Main of America, our ship felt a terrible shock,
which put our men in such consternation that they could hardly tell
where they were or what to think; but every one began to prepare for
death. And, indeed, the shock was so sudden and violent, that we
took it for granted the ship had struck against a rock; but when the
amazement was a little over, we cast the lead, and sounded, but found
no ground. .... The suddenness of the shock made the guns leap in
their carriages, and several of the men were shaken out of their
hammocks. Captain Davis, who lay with his head on a gun, was thrown
out of his cabin!" Lionel then goes on to impute the shock to an
earthquake, and seems to substantiate the imputation by stating that
a great earthquake, somewhere about that time, did actually do great
mischief along the Spanish land. But I should not much wonder if, in
the darkness of that early hour of the morning, the shock was after
all caused by an unseen whale vertically bumping the hull from
beneath.

I might proceed with several more examples, one way or another known
to me, of the great power and malice at times of the sperm whale. In
more than one instance, he has been known, not only to chase the
assailing boats back to their ships, but to pursue the ship itself,
and long withstand all the lances hurled at him from its decks. The
English ship Pusie Hall can tell a story on that head; and, as for
his strength, let me say, that there have been examples where the
lines attached to a running sperm whale have, in a calm, been
transferred to the ship, and secured there; the whale towing her
great hull through the water, as a horse walks off with a cart.
Again, it is very often observed that, if the sperm whale, once
struck, is allowed time to rally, he then acts, not so often with
blind rage, as with wilful, deliberate designs of destruction to his
pursuers; nor is it without conveying some eloquent indication of his
character, that upon being attacked he will frequently open his
mouth, and retain it in that dread expansion for several consecutive
minutes. But I must be content with only one more and a concluding
illustration; a remarkable and most significant one, by which you
will not fail to see, that not only is the most marvellous event in
this book corroborated by plain facts of the present day, but that
these marvels (like all marvels) are mere repetitions of the ages; so
that for the millionth time we say amen with Solomon--Verily there is
nothing new under the sun.

In the sixth Christian century lived Procopius, a Christian
magistrate of Constantinople, in the days when Justinian was Emperor
and Belisarius general. As many know, he wrote the history of his
own times, a work every way of uncommon value. By the best
authorities, he has always been considered a most trustworthy and
unexaggerating historian, except in some one or two particulars, not
at all affecting the matter presently to be mentioned.

Now, in this history of his, Procopius mentions that, during the term
of his prefecture at Constantinople, a great sea-monster was captured
in the neighboring Propontis, or Sea of Marmora, after having
destroyed vessels at intervals in those waters for a period of more
than fifty years. A fact thus set down in substantial history cannot
easily be gainsaid. Nor is there any reason it should be. Of what
precise species this sea-monster was, is not mentioned. But as he
destroyed ships, as well as for other reasons, he must have been a
whale; and I am strongly inclined to think a sperm whale. And I will
tell you why. For a long time I fancied that the sperm whale had
been always unknown in the Mediterranean and the deep waters
connecting with it. Even now I am certain that those seas are not,
and perhaps never can be, in the present constitution of things, a
place for his habitual gregarious resort. But further investigations
have recently proved to me, that in modern times there have been
isolated instances of the presence of the sperm whale in the
Mediterranean. I am told, on good authority, that on the Barbary
coast, a Commodore Davis of the British navy found the skeleton of a
sperm whale. Now, as a vessel of war readily passes through the
Dardanelles, hence a sperm whale could, by the same route, pass out
of the Mediterranean into the Propontis.

In the Propontis, as far as I can learn, none of that peculiar


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