CHAP. I.] .' THE FIRST DAV. G9 



for with music it bubbles, dances, and grows sandy, and so 

 continues till the music ceases,' but then it presently returns 

 to its wonted calmness and clearness. 1 And Camden tells 

 us of a well near to Kirby in Westmoreland, that ebbs and 

 flows several times every day : and he tells us of a river in 

 Surrey, it is called Mole, that after it has run several miles, 

 being opposed by hills, finds or makes itself a way under 

 ground, 2 and breaks out again so far off, that the inhabitants 

 thereabout boast, as the Spaniards do of their river Anus, 

 that they feed divers flocks of sheep upon a bridge. And, 

 lastly, for I would not tire your patience, one of no less 

 authority than Josephus, that learned Jew, tells us of a 

 river in Judea that runs swiftly all the six days of the week, 

 and stands still and rests all their sabbath. 



But I will lay aside my discourse of rivers, and tell you 

 some things of the monsters, or fish, call them what you 

 will, that they breed and feed in them. Pliny the philosopher 

 says, in the third chapter of. his ninth book, that in the 

 Indian sea, the fish called balaena 3 or whirlpool, is so long 

 and broad, as to take up more in length and breadth than 

 two acres of ground ; and, of other fish of two hundred 

 cubits long ; and that in the river Ganges, there be eels of 

 thirty feet long. He says there, that these monsters appear 

 in that sea only when the tempestuous winds oppose the 

 torrents of waters falling from the rocks into it, and so 

 turning what lay at the bottom to be seen on the water's top. 

 And he says, that the people of Cadara, an island near this 

 place, make the timber for their houses of those fish-bones. 

 He there tells us, that there are sometimes a thousand of 

 these great eels found wrapt, or interwoven together. He 

 tells us there, that it appears that dolphins love music, and 

 will come, when called for, by some men or boys, that know 

 and use to feed them, and that they can swim as swift as an 

 arrow can be shot out of a bow ; and much of this is spoken 

 concerning the dolphin, and other fish : as may be found 



1 A report no doubt taken from some bubbling spring. Rennie. 



2 This is an erroneous notion which formerly prevailed, and is quoted 

 in Drayton's Polyolbion, Milton on Rivers, and Pope's Windsor Forest. 

 The bed of the river is in some parts an absorbent earth, on the surface of 

 which, in dry seasons it often occurs that no stream appears. Frequent 

 strata of chalk intervene, and over these it is both constant and clear. N. 



3 Properly a whale. 



