the end of March, laden with a precious collection.
My departure for France was fixed for the first days in May.
Meanwhile I was occupying myself in classifying my mineralogical,
botanical, and zoological riches, when the accident happened
to the Scotia.

I was perfectly up in the subject which was the question of the day.
How could I be otherwise? I had read and reread all the American
and European papers without being any nearer a conclusion.
This mystery puzzled me. Under the impossibility of forming
an opinion, I jumped from one extreme to the other.
That there really was something could not be doubted,
and the incredulous were invited to put their finger on the wound
of the Scotia.

On my arrival at New York the question was at its height.
The theory of the floating island, and the unapproachable sandbank,
supported by minds little competent to form a judgment, was abandoned.
And, indeed, unless this shoal had a machine in its stomach,
how could it change its position with such astonishing rapidity?

From the same cause, the idea of a floating hull of an enormous
wreck was given up.

There remained, then, only two possible solutions of the question,
which created two distinct parties: on one side, those who were
for a monster of colossal strength; on the other, those who were
for a submarine vessel of enormous motive power.

But this last theory, plausible as it was, could not stand against
inquiries made in both worlds. That a private gentleman should have
such a machine at his command was not likely. Where, when, and how
was it built? and how could its construction have been kept secret?
Certainly a Government might possess such a destructive machine.
And in these disastrous times, when the ingenuity of man has
multiplied the power of weapons of war, it was possible that,
without the knowledge of others, a State might try to work such
a formidable engine.

But the idea of a war machine fell before the declaration of Governments.
As public interest was in question, and transatlantic communications
suffered, their veracity could not be doubted. But how admit that
the construction of this submarine boat had escaped the public eye?
For a private gentleman to keep the secret under such circumstances would
be very difficult, and for a State whose every act is persistently watched
by powerful rivals, certainly impossible.

Upon my arrival in New York several persons did me
the honour of consulting me on the phenomenon in question.
I had published in France a work in quarto, in two volumes,
entitled Mysteries of the Great Submarine Grounds. This book,
highly approved of in the learned world, gained for me a special
reputation in this rather obscure branch of Natural History.
My advice was asked. As long as I could deny the reality
of the fact, I confined myself to a decided negative.
But soon, finding myself driven into a corner, I was
obliged to explain myself point by point. I discussed
the question in all its forms, politically and scientifically;
and I give here an extract from a carefully-studied article
which I published in the number of the 30th of April.
It ran as follows:

"After examining one by one the different theories, rejecting all
other suggestions, it becomes necessary to admit the existence
of a marine animal of enormous power.

"The great depths of the ocean are entirely unknown to us.
Soundings cannot reach them. What passes in those remote depths--
what beings live, or can live, twelve or fifteen miles beneath
the surface of the waters--what is the organisation of these animals,
we can scarcely conjecture. However, the solution of the problem
submitted to me may modify the form of the dilemma. Either we do know
all the varieties of beings which people our planet, or we do not.
If we do NOT know them all--if Nature has still secrets in the deeps
for us, nothing is more conformable to reason than to admit the existence
of fishes, or cetaceans of other kinds, or even of new species,
of an organisation formed to inhabit the strata inaccessible to soundings,
and which an accident of some sort has brought at long intervals
to the upper level of the ocean.

"If, on the contrary, we DO know all living kinds, we must
necessarily seek for the animal in question amongst those marine
beings already classed; and, in that case, I should be disposed
to admit the existence of a gigantic narwhal.

"The common narwhal, or unicorn of the sea, often attains
a length of sixty feet. Increase its size fivefold or tenfold,
give it strength proportionate to its size, lengthen its
destructive weapons, and you obtain the animal required.
It will have the proportions determined by the officers
of the Shannon, the instrument required by the perforation
of the Scotia, and the power necessary to pierce the hull
of the steamer.

"Indeed, the narwhal is armed with a sort of ivory sword,
a halberd, according to the expression of certain naturalists.
The principal tusk has the hardness of steel. Some of these tusks
have been found buried in the bodies of whales, which the unicorn
always attacks with success. Others have been drawn out,
not without trouble, from the bottoms of ships, which they


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