427 
THE WHITE WHALE 
less than 13,000, have been -annually slain on the nor* -west coast by 
the Americans alone ; yet there are considerations which render even 
this circumstance of little or no account as an opposing argument in 
this matter. 
Natural as it is to he somewhat incredulous concerning the pop- 
ulousness of the more enormous creatures of the globe, yet what shall 
we say to Harto, the historian of Goa, when he tells us that at one 
hunting the King of Siam took 4000 elephants; that in those regions 
elephants are numerous as droves of cattle in the temperate climes. 
And there seems no reason to doubt that if these elephants, which have 
now been hunted for thousands of years, by Semiramis, by Porus, by 
Hannibal, and by all the successive monarchs of the East — if they still 
survive there in great numbers, much more may the great whale out- 
last all hunting, since he has a pasture to expatiate in, which is pre- 
cisely twice as large as all Asia, both Americas, Europe and Africa, 
New Holland, and all the Isles of the sea combined. 
Moreover: we are to consider, that from the presumed great longev- 
ity of whales, their probably attaining the age of a century and more, 
therefore at any one period of time, several distinct adult generations 
must be contemporary. And what that is, we may soon gain some 
idea of, by imagining all the graveyards, cemeteries, and family vaults 
of creation yielding up the live bodies of all the men, women, and 
children who were alive seventy-five years ago; and adding this count- 
less host to the present human population of the globe. 
Wherefore, for all these things, we account the whale immortal in 
his species, however perishable in his individuality. He swam the 
seas before the continents broke water; he once swam over the site 
of the Tuileries, and Windsor Castle, and the Kremlin. In Noah’s 
flood he despised Noah’s Ark; and if ever the world is to be again 
flooded, like the Netherlands, to kill off its rats, then the eternal whale 
will still survive, and rearing upon the topmost crest of the equatorial 
flood, spout his frothed defiance to the skies. 
