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- 2124
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:09.927Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 2041
- text
- say. Imbedded in amber, do we not find little fishes’ fins,
porpoise-teeth, sea-gulls’ beaks and claws; nay, butterflies’ wings,
and sometimes a topaz? And how could that be, unless the substance was
first soft? Amber is gold-fishes’ brains, I say.”
“For one,” said Babbalanja, “I’ll not believe that, till you prove to
me, Braid-Beard, that ideas themselves are found imbedded therein.”
“Another of your crazy conceits, philosopher,” replied Mohi,
disdainfully; “yet, sometimes plenty of strange black-letter characters
have been discovered in amber.” And throwing back his hoary old head,
he jetted forth his vapors like a whale.
“Indeed?” cried Babbalanja. “Then, my lord Media, it may be earnestly
inquired, whether the gentle laws of the tribes before the flood, were
not sought to be embalmed and perpetuated between transparent and sweet
scented tablets of amber.”
“That, now, is not so unlikely,” said Mohi; “for old King Rondo the
Round once set about getting him a coffin-lid of amber; much desiring a
famous mass of it owned by the ancestors of Donjalolo of Juam. But no
navies could buy it. So Rondo had himself urned in a crystal.”
“And that immortalized Rondo, no doubt,” said Babbalanja. “Ha! ha! pity
he fared not like the fat porpoise frozen and tombed in an iceberg; its
icy shroud drifting south, soon melted away, and down, out of sight,
sunk the dead.”
“Well, so much for amber,” cried Media. “Now, Mohi, go on about
Farnoo.”
“Know, then, my lord, that Farnoo is more like ambergris than amber.”
“Is it? then, pray, tell us something on that head. You know all about
ambergris, too, I suppose.”
“Every thing about all things, my lord. Ambergris is found both on land
and at sea. But especially, are lumps of it picked up on the spicy
coasts of Jovanna; indeed, all over the atolls and reefs in the eastern
quarter of Mardi.”
“But what is this ambergris? Braid-Beard,” said Babbalanja.
“Aquovi, the chymist, pronounced it the fragments of mushrooms growing
at the bottom of the sea; Voluto held, that like naptha, it springs
from fountains down there. But it is neither.”
“I have heard,” said Yoomy, “that it is the honey-comb of bees, fallen
from flowery cliffs into the brine.”
“Nothing of the kind,” said Mohi. “Do I not know all about it,
minstrel? Ambergris is the petrified gall-stones of crocodiles.”
“What!” cried Babbalanja, “comes sweet scented ambergris from those
musky and chain-plated river cavalry? No wonder, then, their flesh is
so fragrant; their upper jaws as the visors of vinaigrettes.”
“Nay, you are all wrong,” cried King Media.
Then, laughing to himself:—“It’s pleasant to sit by, a demi-god, and
hear the surmisings of mortals, upon things they know nothing about;
theology, or amber, or ambergris, it’s all the same. But then, did I
always out with every thing I know, there would be no conversing with
these comical creatures.
“Listen, old Mohi; ambergris is a morbid secretion of the Spermaceti
whale; for like you mortals, the whale is at times a sort of
hypochondriac and dyspeptic. You must know, subjects, that in
antediluvian times, the Spermaceti whale was much hunted by sportsmen,
that being accounted better pastime, than pursuing the Behemoths on
shore. Besides, it was a lucrative diversion. Now, sometimes upon
striking the monster, it would start off in a dastardly fright, leaving
certain fragments in its wake. These fragments the hunters picked up,
giving over the chase for a while. For in those days, as now, a
quarter-quintal of ambergris was more valuable than a whole ton of
spermaceti.”
“Nor, my lord,” said Babbalanja, “would it have been wise to kill the
fish that dropped such treasures: no more than to murder the noddy that
laid the golden eggs.”
“Beshrew me! a noddy it must have been,” gurgled Mohi through his
pipe-stem, “to lay golden eggs for others to hatch.”
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