42 8 Notes on Sport and Travel v 



If there be any truth in this story of Pliny's (and 

 I confess that I cannot see why there should not be), 

 what a wealth of animal life there must have been in 

 his time off Gades, that wonderful ' leaping-off place ' 

 of the world, — that rim edge of the platter, where the 

 earth finally ended, a belief held by Dryden himself, 

 and by no means extinct among some of our religious 

 sects at this day, — that rim to which Greek philo- 

 sophers journeyed to see the fiery setting sun make 

 the western sea boil and steam, as he quenched his 

 red-hot disk in its cool waters. After studying which 

 phenomenon they would not, improbably, turn their 

 footsteps landwards, and spend the gloaming in observ- 

 ing, philosophically of course, those other interesting 

 phenomena connected with the pretty but improper 

 Gaditanes of Cadiz, phenomena which are well worthy 

 the attention of the traveller even in our own time. 



They saw all sorts of things in those days, those 

 happy philosophers, who invented their theories first 

 and then looked through their philosophical spectacles 

 for facts to prove them ; and nowhere did they see 

 more wonderful things than on this south-west coast 

 of Spain. Among others, mermen and mermaids, 

 both alive and dead, as Augustus Ceesar was advised 

 by the governor of those parts by letter. Doubtless 

 the things they saw were real, though wrongly ob- 

 served and badly described, and Pliny's chapter on 

 them is most curious and instructive to the student 

 of the disappearing and the disappeared. 



The truth is, I believe, that the grampus is so 



