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
substance called BRIT is to be found, the aliment of the right whale.
But I have every reason to believe that the food of the sperm
whale--squid or cuttle-fish--lurks at the bottom of that sea, because
large creatures, but by no means the largest of that sort, have been
found at its surface. If, then, you properly put these statements
together, and reason upon them a bit, you will clearly perceive that,
according to all human reasoning, Procopius's sea-monster, that for
half a century stove the ships of a Roman Emperor, must in all
probability have been a sperm whale.
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