1690.] ALOYSIO CADAMUSTO. 23 



" Thou, for the Beauty of the Universe, 

 With Monsters various in their Forms 

 Hast Peopled all the Liquid Plains ; 

 And wil'st that all within the spatious Deep, 

 To the huge Whales shou'd Homage jsay 

 Who look like floating Rocks upon the Sea.'' 1 



Indeed such as have no more Experience of the Sea than 

 honest Aloysio Cadamusto- had, and all his Ships Crew 

 imagine, that these huge Beasts seek after to devour them. 

 This celebrated Voyager in the I Chapter of the History of 

 his Naviyation tells us, they were all very much afraid of a 

 terrible Monster, whose Fins were like, the Sails of a Wind- 

 mill, which came down upon them, but they escap'd that 

 Danger, by clapping all their Sails to, and flying faster than 

 the Monster could pursue them. As for us, we were so far 

 from being afraid, that we were extreamly delighted to see 

 those Colosses play in the Waves with as much agility, as a 

 Bird flies in the Air. One of these Whales^ was much bigger 

 than any of the rest, and lookt like a little Isle with a little 

 Mountain in it, on the surface of the smooth Ocean. 



I question whether that prodigious half of a Jaw which is 



1 " Pour la beaute de I'Univers, 



De IMonstres en formes divers 



Tu peuplas les humides plaines ; 



Et voulus qu'en leur vaste enclos, 

 Tons rendissent hommage a ces lourdes Baleines 

 Qu'on prend pour des ecueils sur la face des flots." 



2 Voyages of Cadamosto and Pedro de Cintra, in the Portuguese 

 service, 1454-1463, in the collection of voyages by Vicenza, 1507. 



3 Compare Milton (1665), Paradise Lost, Book vii : — 



" . . . . these leviathan, 

 Hugest of living creatures, on the deep, 

 Stretch'd like a promontory, sleeps or swims, 

 And seems a moving land.'' 



When a solitary or lone sperm-whale is observed it almost invariably 

 proves to be an old bull. When two or more schools of whales coalesce 

 and form a very large assemblage, this is technically distinguished as a 

 " body of whales". 



