MAGNITUDE OF THE WHALE. 43 



sometimes yields, it is said, three hundred 

 barrels, ordinarily one hundred and fifty, or 

 one hundred and eighty. 



Though so huge a creature, a very small 

 part of its bulk appears out of water, and that 

 continually bending with the undulations of the 

 waves ; nor have you so fair a view of this 

 immense mass of organized matter, as of a ship 

 afloat in comparison to one on the stocks. To 

 have a just idea- of its greatness, it should be 

 seen on dry land. As is usually the case, the 

 observed reality of this mammoth animal, pro- 

 digious as it is, hardly comes up to the pre- 

 conceived vague idea of it, still less to the 

 poetic notion of 



" That sea-beast 



Leviathan, which God of all his works 

 Created hugest, that swim the ocean stream. 

 Him haply slumbering on the Norway foam, 

 The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff, 

 Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell, 

 "With fixed anchor in his scaly rind, 

 Moors by his side under the lee, while night 

 Invests the sea and wished morn delays." 



They used to tell some "big fish stories" 

 in Milton's day, and I have no doubt they had 



