124 



Whittington and His Cat. 



but cats. From thence it appears that it was not the whiskered four- 

 footed mouse-killing cat that was the source of the magistrate's wealth, 

 but the coasting, sailing, coal-carrying cat ; that, gentlemen, was Whit- 

 tington's cat." 



But Foote's solution of the problem, ingenious though it is, has not 

 been considered as settling the matter entirely, and a controversy has 

 arisen on the point which, like many controversies in which neither 

 party has any positive knowledge on the subject, has left the disput- 

 ants of the same opinion that they were "when they began the wordy 

 warfare. On the one hand it is argued that the story of Whittington 

 getting his wealth by a cat is a pure fiction ; that as he was born before 

 the year 1360, the year in which his father died, and was Lord Mayor 

 the first time in 1397, and as the cat voyage occurred when he was a 

 lad, it must have happened about the year 1375, when he was about 

 fifteen years old. Now the story lays the scene of the cat adventure 

 on the west coast of Africa, and during the whole of Whittington's 

 life-time that coast was as nearly unknown to Europe as the coast of 

 America, for the Portuguese did not begin exploring it until the fifteenth 

 century, not in fact until after the death of Whittington, in whose 

 time the most distant voyages of English ships could only have been 

 to the Baltic, or the Mediterranean, on the shores of which cats were 

 as well known and as plentiful as in England. 



This appears to be a pretty strong line of argument, but not strong 

 enough to convince an antiquary who had made up his mind other- 

 wise ; so forgotten books of travel are unearthed, old encyclopedias 

 are ransacked and all the facts and hints arc gathered together, and it 

 is shown that the African shores were visited by the English — not 

 continuously, perhaps, but enough to say they were there — at the 

 time Whittington is said to have sent his cat there. And more than 

 that, there was great need that the cat should be sent there, for even as 

 late as 1732, one Jean Barbat testifies of the enormous quantity of rats 

 that were there, and that the cats were imported from Europe. And 

 besides, the cat ivas able to be the source of his wealth, for cats brought 

 enormous prices in countries so troubled with rats. 



Two cats Avere taken out as a speculation to Cuyaba in Brazil, where 

 there was a plague of rats, and they sold for a pound of gold ; their 

 kittens brought each thirty pieces of eight, or over thirty dollars in 

 our money. The next generation brought about twenty dollars a piece, 

 and so the price gradually fell as the supply increased; and the elder 

 Amalgro is said to have given 600 pieces of eight, or $675, to the per- 

 son who presented him with the first cat which was brought from 



