30 THE GREAT THIRST LAND. 



we had been passing through fields of sea- weed, and that 

 extraordinary yellow stuff designated by the sailors 

 " whale-spume " was floating around us. What it is 

 composed of I do not know, but imagine it is immense 

 collections of diminutive squid; and of one thing I am 

 certain that whales are almost invariably seen in the 

 vicinity of this spume. 



At least thirty or more whales on this occasion 

 must have been in sight; and if ever creatures appeared 

 to enjoy life and take the world easy, they do. The 

 very blowing noise they make seemed like a grunt of 

 approval. The captain, who has been many years at 

 sea, came up to me while watching them, and stated, 

 that experience of steamers has made them far more 

 cautious than formerly ; for that, in his younger days, 

 he could remember almost striking them with the stem. 

 Here we have it that whales profit by experience ; but as 

 for man that paragon of perfection how many lessons 

 are thrown away upon him ! 



Since we left Madeira, flying-fish have been unusually 

 numerous ; and to-day they are even more abundant, and 

 consequently porpoises, bonito, and skip- jacks are having 

 a high old time among them. All must know that 

 the first belongs to the whale family, are warm-blooded, 

 suckle their young, and are not fish : while the former 

 of the two last is but a giant mackerel, known in 

 the Mediterranean as tunny-fish, in the St. Lawrence as 

 horse-mackerel, and in mid-ocean, by sailors, as albecore. 

 They are beautifully marked, very active, and ex- 

 tremely powerful in the water, and possess the charac- 

 teristic minor fins between the lower dorsal fin and tail. 

 The skip-jack is also like the mackerel, but slimmer 

 in build ; however, it does not possess this characteristic 



