140 THE CRUISE OF TEE " CACHALOT." 



glories, marvels, and mysteries of the mighty deep you 

 will hear not a word. I can never forget when on my 

 first voyage to the West Indies, at the age of twelve, I 

 was one night smitten with awe and wonder at the 

 sight of a vast halo round the moon, some thirty or 

 forty degrees in diameter. Turning to the man at the 

 wheel, I asked him earnestly " what that was." He 

 looked up with an uninterested eye for an instant in the 

 direction of my finger, then listlessly informed me, 

 ** That's what they call a sarcle." For a long time I 

 wondered what he could mean, but it gradually dawned 

 upon me that it was his Norfolk pronunciation of the 

 word circle. The definition was a typical one, no worse 

 than would be given by the great majority of seamen of 

 most of the natural phenomena they witness daily. 

 Very few seamen could distinguish between one whale 

 and another of a different species, or give an intelligible 

 account of the most ordinary and often-seen denizens of 

 the sea. Whalers are especially to be blamed for their 

 blindness. " Eyes and no Eyes ; or the Art of Seeing " 

 has evidently been little heard of among them. To 

 this day I can conceive of no more delightful journey 

 for a naturalist to take than a voyage in a southern 

 whaler, esj)ecially if he were allowed to examine at his 

 leisure such creatures as were caught. But on board 

 the Cachalot I could get no information at all upon the 

 habits of the strange creatures we met with, except 

 whales, and very little about them. 



I have before referred to the great molluscs upon 

 which the sperm whale feeds, portions of which I so 

 frequently saw ejected from the stomach of dying 

 whales. Great as my curiosity naturally was to know 

 more of these immense organisms, all my inquiries on 



