Its enormous size quite startled my wife and little boy; the length
being from sixty to sixty-five feet, and the girth between thirty and
forty, while the weight could not have been less than 50,000 lbs.
The color was a uniform velvety black, and the enormous head about
one-third of the length of the entire hulk, the eyes quite small, not
much larger than those of an ox, and the ears almost undiscernable.
The jaw opened very far back, and was nearly sixteen feet in length,
the most curious part of its structure being the remarkable substance
known as whalebone, masses of which appeared all along the jaws, solid
at the base, and splitting into a sort of fringe at the extremity. This
arrangement is for the purpose of aiding the whale in procuring its
food, and separating it from the water.
The tongue was remarkably large, soft, and full of oil; the opening of
the throat wonderfully small, scarcely two inches in diameter.
`Why, what can the monster eat?' exclaimed Fritz; `he can never
swallow a proper mouthful down this little gullet!'
`The mode of feeding adopted by the whale is so curious,' I replied,
`that I must explain it to you before we begin work.
`This animal (for I should tell you that a whale is not a fish; he
possess no gills, he breathes atmospheric air, and would be drowned if
too long detained below the surface of the water); this animal, then,
frequents those parts of the ocean best supplied with the various
creatures on which he feeds.
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