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- species. A significant illustration of the fact, again and again
repeated in this book, that the skeleton of the whale furnishes but
little clue to the shape of his fully invested body. So Owen
rechristened the monster Zeuglodon; and in his paper read before the
London Geological Society, pronounced it, in substance, one of the most
extraordinary creatures which the mutations of the globe have blotted
out of existence.
When I stand among these mighty Leviathan skeletons, skulls, tusks,
jaws, ribs, and vertebræ, all characterized by partial resemblances to
the existing breeds of sea-monsters; but at the same time bearing on
the other hand similar affinities to the annihilated antichronical
Leviathans, their incalculable seniors; I am, by a flood, borne back to
that wondrous period, ere time itself can be said to have begun; for
time began with man. Here Saturn’s grey chaos rolls over me, and I
obtain dim, shuddering glimpses into those Polar eternities; when
wedged bastions of ice pressed hard upon what are now the Tropics; and
in all the 25,000 miles of this world’s circumference, not an
inhabitable hand’s breadth of land was visible. Then the whole world
was the whale’s; and, king of creation, he left his wake along the
present lines of the Andes and the Himmalehs. Who can show a pedigree
like Leviathan? Ahab’s harpoon had shed older blood than the Pharaoh’s.
Methuselah seems a school-boy. I look round to shake hands with Shem. I
am horror-struck at this antemosaic, unsourced existence of the
unspeakable terrors of the whale, which, having been before all time,
must needs exist after all humane ages are over.
But not alone has this Leviathan left his pre-adamite traces in the
stereotype plates of nature, and in limestone and marl bequeathed his
ancient bust; but upon Egyptian tablets, whose antiquity seems to claim
for them an almost fossiliferous character, we find the unmistakable
print of his fin. In an apartment of the great temple of Denderah, some
fifty years ago, there was discovered upon the granite ceiling a
sculptured and painted planisphere, abounding in centaurs, griffins,
and dolphins, similar to the grotesque figures on the celestial globe
of the moderns. Gliding among them, old Leviathan swam as of yore; was
there swimming in that planisphere, centuries before Solomon was
cradled.
Nor must there be omitted another strange attestation of the antiquity
of the whale, in his own osseous post-diluvian reality, as set down by
the venerable John Leo, the old Barbary traveller.
“Not far from the Sea-side, they have a Temple, the Rafters and Beams
of which are made of Whale-Bones; for Whales of a monstrous size are
oftentimes cast up dead upon that shore. The Common People imagine,
that by a secret Power bestowed by God upon the Temple, no Whale can
pass it without immediate death. But the truth of the Matter is, that
on either side of the Temple, there are Rocks that shoot two Miles into
the Sea, and wound the Whales when they light upon ’em. They keep a
Whale’s Rib of an incredible length for a Miracle, which lying upon the
Ground with its convex part uppermost, makes an Arch, the Head of which
cannot be reached by a Man upon a Camel’s Back. This Rib (says John
Leo) is said to have layn there a hundred Years before I saw it. Their
Historians affirm, that a Prophet who prophesy’d of Mahomet, came from
this Temple, and some do not stand to assert, that the Prophet Jonas
was cast forth by the Whale at the Base of the Temple.”
In this Afric Temple of the Whale I leave you, reader, and if you be a
Nantucketer, and a whaleman, you will silently worship there.
CHAPTER 105. Does the Whale’s Magnitude Diminish?—Will He Perish?
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