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There was nothing to vary the monotony of such a scene, for an hour, but the regular rolling of a sea that was but little agitated, a few occasional strokes of the oars, that were given in order to keep the barge in its place, or the heavy breathing of some smaller fish of the cetaceous kind, as it rose to the surface to inhale the atmosphere.
Theories sufficient have been hazarded, and books written without number from the days of old Aristotle, who arranged them in three great divisions, the Cetaceous, the Cartilaginous, and the Spinous; down to Gmelin, who divided them into six orders, the Apodal, the Jugular, the Thoracic, the Abdominal, the Branchiostagous, and the Chondropterygious.
If we suppose the case of the discovery of a skeleton of a Greenland whale in a fossil state, not a single cetaceous animal being known to exist, what naturalist would have ventured conjecture on the possibility of a carcass so gigantic being supported on the minute crustacea and mollusca living in the frozen seas of the extreme North? See Zoological Remarks to Capt. Back's Expedition, by Dr.
These concretions are remarkable from the great number of large silicified bones, apparently of cetaceous animals, which they contain; and likewise of a shark's teeth, closely resembling those of the Carcharias megalodon. Shells of the following species, of which the gigantic Oyster and Perna are the most conspicuous, are numerously embedded in the concretions:
This herbivorous animal of the cetaceous family, is called by the Indians apcia and avia,* and it attains here generally ten or twelve feet in length. The manatee abounds in the Orinoco below the cataracts, in the Rio Meta, and in the Apure, between the two islands of Carizales and Conserva.
Three men kept watch, day and night, in the 'crow's-nest, at the maintop; but though we beat along the whole coast, through Davis' Strait, and among the mighty icebergs of Baffin's Bay, we saw no cetaceous creatures, save twice some floundering porpoises, and thrice a solitary grampus. With these beings I endeavored to open communication, but they made no intelligible responses.
Are these cetacea peculiar to the great rivers of South America, like the manatee, which, according to Cuvier, is also a fresh water cetaceous animal? or must we admit that they go up from the sea against the current, as the beluga sometimes does in the rivers of Asia?
"How far these islands may be the Capua to the whale, which Mr Courtenay presumes, I cannot say," answered the surgeon, pompously; "but I have observed that all the cetaceous tribe are very much annoyed by vermin, which adhere to their skins.
While talking of cetaceous animals, to which order the porpoise belongs, I must remark on a very common error held by seaman as well as landsmen, that whales spout out water. The idea is, that the water is taken into the stomach while the whale is feeding, and ejected when he rises to the surface. This is in no sense the case.
When within distance, the bowman leaps out, strikes the dugong, and returns to the canoe with the shaft in his hand. On being struck, the animal dives, carrying out the line, but generally rises to the surface and dies in a few minutes, not requiring a second wound, a circumstance surprising in the case of a cetaceous animal, six or eight feet in length, and of proportionate bulk.
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