APPENDIX 



"Let the whale appear first, since by its bigness it is a kind 

 of king of the sea; and if where the king is, the court is, we may 

 give that title to the sea of Chile, where there is such store of 

 whales, that I know not any place where they abound more; and 

 they are accompanied by such a court of little fishes of all kinds, 

 that those who have navigated those seas, cannot but mention 

 it with admiration." 



— Alonso de Ovalle; ''Churchill/' vol. Ill, p. 40. 



Of the town of Messa, in the region of Los ''in the extreme 

 part of Africa," is written: 



"Not far from the sea-side they have a Temple, which they 

 greatly esteeme and honour. Out of which. Historiographers 

 say, that the same Prophet, of whom their great Mahamet fore- 

 told, should proceed. Yea, some there are which sticke not to 

 affirme, that the Prophet Jonas was cast forth by the Whale 

 upon the shoare of Messa, when he was sent to preach unto the 

 Ninevites. The rafters and beames of the said Temple are of 

 Whales bone. And it is a usuall thing amongst them, to see 

 whales of an huge and monstrous bignesse cast up dead upon 

 their shoare, which by reason of their hugeness and strange 

 deformitie, may terrifie and astonish the beholders. The com- 

 mon people imagine, that, by reason of a certain secret power 

 and vertue infused from heaven by God upon the said temple, 

 each whale which would swim past it, can by no meanes escape 

 death. Which opinion had almost perswaded me, especially 

 when at my being there, I my selfe saw a mighty whale cast up, 

 unlesse a certaine Jew had told me, that it was no such strange 

 matter: for (quoth he) there lie certaine rockes two miles into 

 the Sea on either side, and as the Sea moves, so the whales 



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