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When the boat first touched the beach, we observed an innumerable quantity of the little fish called sillocks swimming about, several of which were killed by the boat-hooks or taken in the hand. A great number of white whales, seals, and narwhals were also playing about near the beach during the night.
A submarine island, forty fathoms from the surface, had been occupied three thousand years by this venerable person. He came out to meet me upon the back of a mighty 'rorqual, and a body-guard of four hundred picked narwhals swam before him. Fifty white whales surrounded their monarch, and a host of dolphins, grampuses, and porpoises brought up the rear.
At the end of May they came to an expanse of ice intersected by a network of channels with open water, which blocked the way. Now animal life began to appear with the coming of summer. In a large opening were seen the grey backs of narwhals rolling over in the dark-blue water. A seal or two were seeking fish, and tracks of Polar bears made them long for fresh meat.
We saw also, for the first time, one or two shoals of narwhals, called by the sailors sea-unicorns. A steady breeze springing up from the W.N.W. in the afternoon, the ships stood to the northward till we had distinctly made out that no passage to the westward could at present be found between the ice and the land.
Frequently, as we pulled on, we heard the loud blasts of the narwhals, or sea-unicorns, as they came towards the bay in shoals; and each time I fancied we must be close upon a whale, and that the sport was about to begin, so loud a sound did they make.
The Treaty House was a fine, old-fashioned brick, with a long saloon or double parlor containing many curiosities, such as pieces of old ships of war, weapons used in Polynesia and brought home by old sea captains, the jaws of whales and narwhals, figure-heads from perished vessels, harpoons, and points of various naval actions.
The narwhals were here very numerous; these animals appear fond of remaining with their backs exposed above the surface of the water, in the same manner as the whale, but for a much longer time, and we frequently also observed their horns erect, and quite stationary for several minutes together.
Curiously enough, the Chinese Emperor had given a large order for narwhals' horns to repair some ancient pagoda, which was fenced in with them, but I outbid him in the market, and his celestial highness has had to wait. There is a lift here in the corner, but we do not need it. Pray step through this door. This is the billiard-room," he continued as they advanced into the adjoining room.
These are really huge porpoises, allied to the narwhals, but without the narwhal's exaggerated tusk. He decided to lay up his ships here for the winter, and to pursue the rest of his western explorations in his boats.
If in a series of evolving generations the line of modification proceeding from a terrestrial animal like a cat to semi-aquatic and marine types substantially like an otter and a seal should be carried further, it will inevitably lead to forms possessing characters such as those displayed by whales and the related porpoises, dolphins, and narwhals of the order cetacea.
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