^232 Miscellaneous. 



saw a whale ; but in the Bay of Maskat one used to come in every 

 day in the afternoon, plough his way among the boats and vessels 

 there, and then go out again. He appeared to me to be about 20 

 or 30 feet long; and when I pointed him out to the officers of the 

 vessel, they said " that is ' Muscat Tom ; ' he pays a visit to the 

 bay every day, and has been known to do so from time immemorial." 

 "We saw schools of porpoises, sometimes perhaps two miles long, on 

 the south-east coast ; and one of the perquisites of the Shaykh of 

 Raidah, a town on the coast about sixty miles north-east of Makalla, 

 is the unborn young of the porpoise when a female is caught in this 

 condition. Once, also, when Ave were sailing down the coast, in a 

 stiff breeze, towards Aden, two or more " blackfish," as the sailors 

 called them, accompanied us for twenty-four hours, keeping close 

 to the side of the vessel and sporting round her. They appeared 

 to me to be about 12 feet long. 



But, if we did not happen to see any whales on this coast, we 

 heard that the fishermen (who go to the most unfrequented parts 

 yearly to catch small and large shark, the former to salt-in for pro- 

 vision, which is a staple commodity on this coast, and the latter for 

 their fins for the China market) often pick up portions of ambergris, 

 which, I think, at Maskat, sells for more than its weight in gold, 

 chiefly for its fancied aphrodisiacal power. 



One day, one of these fishermen came alongside our vessel, and 

 handed me in, through my scuttle, a piece half as big as my liead. 

 It was formed of concentric layers like cholesterine, in which were 

 imbedded an innumerable quantity of cuttlefish-beaks. Of course, 

 I only regarded it in a scientific point of view ; and, fancing that 

 it was analogous to the "hair-ball " in the ox's stomach (the horny 

 beaks of the cuttlefish forming the ingesta), I took a little bit as a 

 specimen, gave the man a dollar, and told him to take the rest to 

 the jMaskat market. 



On another occasion, while fishing in the jolly-boat with a mid- 

 shipman and one of our Beni-Bo-Ali pilots in the channel between 

 the mainland of Arabia and the island of Masira, we saw some large 

 fish biting at something on the surface of the water, when, to our 

 astonishment, the Beni-Bo-Ali pilot leapt over and, swimming up to 

 it, laid hold of it and brought it on board, when it turned out to be 

 a dead cuttlefish. Our pilot said, " Ah ! I thought it had been a 

 piece of ambergris which the sharks were eating ; for they are very 

 fond of it, and it is often found under such circumstances." 



All this goes to prove that there are many whales in this part 

 of the Indian Ocean just within the tropics, and that they are the 

 sperm-whale. Of course they cannot get very far out of the tropics 

 to the north without getting into the land-locked waters of the Bed 

 Sea and Persian Gulf respectively. 



I know that Cephalopoda abound on this coast, and that American 

 whalers used to capture the sperm-whale there ; for our captain had 

 saved the crew of an American whaler there which had become in- 

 jured, and took them all up to Maskat. 



