the largest this is some five
feet long on the back, and eight or ten feet in height,--so large, that,
when the creature is swimming on the surface, a strong side-wind will
sometimes blow it over. It is a blue-fish on a big scale, or a Semmes in
the sea, hungry as famine, fierce as plague, dainty as a Roman epicure,
yet omnivorous as time. The seal is its South-Down mutton, the tongue of
the whale its venison; for whenever its numbers are sufficient, it will
attack this huge cetacean, and torture him till he submits and gives a
horrible feast to their greed. Captain Handy had seen thirty or forty of
them at this business. They fly with inconceivable fury at their victim,
aiming chiefly at the lip, tearing great mouthfuls away, which they
instantly reject while darting for another. The bleeding and bellowing
monster goes down like a boulder from a cliff, shoots up like a shell
from a mortar, beats the sea about him all into crimsoned spray with his
tail; but plunge, leap, foam as he may, the finny pirates flesh their
teeth in him still, still are fresh in pursuit, until at length, to end
one torment by submitting to another, the helpless giant opens his
mouth, and permits these sea-devils to devour the quivering morsel they
covet. A big morsel; for the tongue of the full-sized right-whale weighs
a ton and a half, and yields a ton of oil. The killer is sometimes
confounded with the grampus. The latter is considerably larger, has a
longer and slenderer jaw, less round at the muzzle, smaller teeth, and
"isn't so clean a made fish"; for, in nautical parlance, cetaceans are
still fish. Killers frequently try to rob whalers of their prize, and
sometimes actually succeed in carrying it down, despite the lances and
other weapons with which their attack is so strenuously resisted.

Item, cascade. A snowy, broken stripe down a mountain-side; taken to be
snow till the ear better informed the eye. Fine; but you need not go
there to see.

_June 26._--Off to Henley Harbor, sixty-five miles, at the head of the
Strait of Belle Isle. Belle Isle itself--sandstone, rich, the Professor
said, in ancient fossils--lay in view. The anchor went down in deep
water, close beside the notable Castle Island.

There were some considerable floes in the harbor, the largest one
aground in a passage between the two islands by which it is formed. And
now came the blue of pure floe-ice! There is nothing else like it on
this earth, but the sapphire gem in