" Nor have
there been wanting learned exegetists who have opined
that the whale mentioned in the book of Jonah merely meant
a life-preserver--an inflated bag of wind--which the endangered
prophet swam to, and so was saved from a watery doom.
Poor Sag-Harbor, therefore, seems worsted all round.
But he had still another reason for his want of faith.
It was this, if I remember right: Jonah was swallowed
by the whale in the Mediterranean Sea, and after three days'
he was vomited up somewhere within three days' journey of Nineveh,
a city on the Tigris, very much more than three days'
journey across from the nearest point of the Mediterranean coast.
How is that?
But was there no other way for the whale to land the prophet within
that short distance of Nineveh? Yes. He might have carried him
round by the way of the Cape of Good Hope. But not to speak
of the passage through the whole length of the Mediterranean,
and another passage up the Persian Gulf and Red Sea,
such a supposition would involve the complete circumnavigation
of all Africa in three days, not to speak of the Tigris waters,
near the site of Nineveh, being too shallow for any whale to swim in.
Besides, this idea of Jonah's weathering the Cape of Good Hope
at so early a day would wrest the honor of the discovery of that
great headland from Bartholomew Diaz, its reputed discoverer,
and so make modern history a liar.
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