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
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.
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