128 THE WHALE AND 



Notable Cape Horn. Propitious Weather. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



ATLANTIC OCEAN MAMMOTHS AND MONSTERS. 



In the free element beneath me swam, 

 Flounder'd, and dived, in play, in chase, in battle, 

 Fishes of every color, form, and kind ; 

 Which language can not paint, and mariner 

 Had never seen ; from dread Leviathan 

 To insect millions peopling every wave : 

 Gather'd in shoals immense, like floating islands, 

 Led by mysterious instinct through that waste 

 And trackless region, though on every side 

 Assaulted by voracious enemies, 

 Whales, sharks, and monsters, arm'd in front or jaw, 

 With swords, saws, spiral horns, or hooked fangs. 



World before the Flood. 



False Banks, Atlantic Ocean, lat. 36 S., Ion. 46 W. 



SINCE doubling Cape Horn, Providence has 

 been propitious in the offer of whales. We 

 lowered off the notable Cape itself, when in sight 

 of the islands called Diego Ramirez. Although 

 so near to that formidable out-jutting barrier 

 of Nature, between two great oceans, which the 

 reports of weather-beaten mariners have made 

 the abiding-place of storms, it was the loveliest 

 day we had known since leaving the southern 



