Mardi :: :: University of Virginia Library

It's famous botanizing, they say, in Arkansas' boundless
prairies; I commend the student of Ichthyology to an open
boat, and the ocean moors of the Pacific. As your craft
glides along, what strange monsters float by. Elsewhere,
was never seen their like. And nowhere are they found in
the books of the naturalists.

Though America be discovered, the Cathays of the deep
are unknown. And whoso crosses the Pacific might have
read lessons to Buffon. The sea-serpent is not a fable; and
in the sea, that snake is but a garden worm. There are
more wonders than the wonders rejected, and more sights
unrevealed than you or I ever ever dreamt of. Moles and
bats alone should be skeptics; and the only true infidelity is
for a live man to vote himself dead. Be Sir Thomas Brown
our ensample; who, while exploding “Vulgar Errors,” heartily
hugged all the mysteries in the Pentateuch.

But look! fathoms down in the sea; where ever saw you
a phantom like that? An enormous crescent with antlers
like a reindeer, and a Delta of mouths. Slowly it sinks,
and is seen no more.

Doctor Faust saw the devil; but you have seen the “Devil
Fish.”

Look again! Here comes another. Jarl calls it a Bone

Shark. Full as large as a whale, it is spotted like a leopard;
and tusk-like teeth overlap its jaws like those of the
walrus. To seamen, nothing strikes more terror than the
near vicinity of a creature like this. Great ships steer out
of its path. And well they may; since the good craft Essex,
and others, have been sunk by sea-monsters, as the alligator
thrusts his horny snout through a Carribean canoe.

Ever present to us, was the apprehension of some sudden
disaster from the extraordinary zoological specimens we almost
hourly passed.

For the sharks, we saw them, not by units, nor by tens,
nor by hundreds; but by thousands and by myriads. Trust
me, there are more sharks in the sea than mortals on land.

And of these prolific fish there are full as many species as
of dogs. But by the German naturalists Müller and Henle,
who, in christening the sharks, have bestowed upon them the
most heathenish names, they are classed under one family;
which family, according to Müller, king-at-arms, is an undoubted
branch of the ancient and famous tribe of the Chondropterygii.

To begin. There is the ordinary Brown Shark, or seaattorney,
so called by sailors; a grasping, rapacious varlet,
that in spite of the hard knocks received from it, often snapped
viciously at our steering oar. At times, these gentry
swim in herds; especially about the remains of a slaughtered
whale. They are the vultures of the deep.

Then we often encountered the dandy Blue Shark, a long,
taper and mighty genteel looking fellow, with a slender waist,
like a Bond-street beau, and the whitest tiers of teeth imaginable.
This dainty spark invariably lounged by with a
careless fin and an indolent tail. But he looked infernally
heartless.

How his cold-blooded, gentlemanly air, contrasted with
the rude, savage swagger of the Tiger Shark; a round,
portly gourmand; with distended mouth and collapsed conscience,
swimming about seeking whom he might devour.

These gluttons are the scavengers of navies, following ships
in the South Seas, picking up odds and ends of garbage, and
sometimes a tit-bit, a stray sailor. No wonder, then, that
sailors denounce them. In substance, Jarl once assured me,
that under any temporary misfortune, it was one of his sweetest
consolations to remember, that in his day, he had murdered,
not killed, shoals of Tiger Sharks.

Yet this is all wrong. As well hate a seraph, as a shark.
Both were made by the same hand. And that sharks are
lovable, witness their domestic endearments. No Fury so
ferocious, as not to have some amiable side. In the wild
wilderness, a leopard-mother caresses her cub, as Hagar did
Ishmael; or a queen of France the dauphin. We know
not what we do when we hate. And I have the word of
my gentlemanly friend Stanhope, for it; that he who declared
he loved a good hater was but a respectable sort of Hottentot,
at best. No very genteel epithet this, though coming
from the genteelest of men. But when the digger of dictionaries
said that saying of his, he was assuredly not much
of a Christian. However, it is hard for one given up to
constitutional hypos like him, to be filled with the milk and
meekness of the gospels. Yet, with deference, I deny that
my old uncle Johnson really believed in the sentiment ascribed
to him. Love a hater, indeed! Who smacks his
lips over gall? Now hate is a thankless thing. So, let us
only hate hatred; and once give love play, we will fall in
love with a unicorn. Ah! the easiest way is the best; and
to hate, a man must work hard. Love is a delight; but hate
a torment. And haters are thumbscrews, Scotch boots, and
Spanish inquisitions to themselves. In five words—would
they were a Siamese diphthong—he who hates is a fool.

For several days our Chamois was followed by two of
these aforesaid Tiger Sharks. A brace of confidential inseparables,
jogging along in our wake, side by side, like a couple
of highwaymen, biding their time till you come to the crossroads.
But giving it up at last, for a bootless errand, they

dropped farther and farther astern, until completely out of
sight. Much to the Skyeman's chagrin; who long stood in
the stern, lance poised for a dart.

But of all sharks, save me from the ghastly White Shark.
For though we should hate naught, yet some dislikes are
spontaneous; and disliking is not hating. And never yet
could I bring myself to be loving, or even sociable, with a
White Shark. He is not the sort of creature to enlist young
affections.

This ghost of a fish is not often encountered, and shows
plainer by night than by day. Timon-like, he always swims
by himself; gliding along just under the surface, revealing
a long, vague shape, of a milky hue; with glimpses now and
then of his bottomless white pit of teeth. No need of a
dentist hath he. Seen at night, stealing along like a spirit
in the water, with horrific serenity of aspect, the White Shark
sent many a thrill to us twain in the Chamois.

By day, and in the profoundest calms, oft were we startled
by the ponderous sigh of the grampus, as lazily rising to the
surface, he fetched a long breath after napping below.

And time and again we watched the darting albicore, the
fish with the chain-plate armor and golden scales; the Nimrod
of the seas, to whom so many flying fish fall a prey.
Flying from their pursuers, many of them flew into our boat.
But invariably they died from the shock. No nursing could
restore them. One of their wings I removed, spreading it
out to dry under a weight. In two days' time the thin membrane,
all over tracings like those of a leaf, was transparent
as isinglass, and tinted with brilliant hues, like those of a
changing silk.

Almost every day, we spied Black Fish; coal-black and
glossy. They seemed to swim by revolving round and round
in the water, like a wheel; their dorsal fins, every now and
then shooting into view, like spokes.

Of a somewhat similar species, but smaller, and clipperbuilt
about the nose, were the Algerines; so called, probably,

from their corsair propensities; waylaying peaceful fish on
the high seas, and plundering them of body and soul at a
gulp. Atrocious Turks! a crusade should be preached
against them.

Besides all these, we encountered Killers and Thrashers,
by far the most spirited and “spunky” of the finny tribes.
Though little larger than a porpoise, a band of them think
nothing of assailing leviathan himself. They bait the monster,
as dogs a bull. The Killers seizing the Right whale
by his immense, sulky lower lip, and the Thrashers fastening
on to his back, and beating him with their sinewy tails.
Often they come off conquerors, worrying the enemy to death.
Though, sooth to say, if leviathan gets but one sweep at
them with his terrible tail, they go flying into the air, as if
tossed from Taurus' horn.

This sight we beheld. Had old Wouvermans, who once
painted a bull bait, been along with us, a rare chance, that,
for his pencil. And Gudin or Isabey might have thrown
the blue rolling sea into the picture. Lastly, one of Claude's
setting summer suns would have glorified the whole. Oh,
believe me, God's creatures fighting, fin for fin, a thousand
miles from land, and with the round horizon for an arena,
is no ignoble subject for a masterpiece.

Such are a few of the sights of the great South Sea.
But there is no telling all. The Pacific is populous as
China.