o Nineveh. It is to be supposed, however,
that he first well-lined his poor stomach, for both he and the whale had
fasted for three days and nights, and must have been sadly in want of
victuals.

Nineveh, according to our author, was a stupendous city of "three days'
journey." This means its diameter and not its circumference, for we are
told that Jonah "entered into the city a day's journey." If we allow
twenty miles as a moderate days' walk, Nineveh was sixty miles through
from wall to wall, or about twenty times as large as London; and if
densely populated like our metropolis, it must have contained more
than eighty million inhabitants. This is too great a stretch even for a
sailor's yarn. Our author did not take pains to clear his narrative of
discrepancy. In his last verse he informs us that the city contained
"more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their
right hand and their left." If this number is correct Nineveh was a
large place, but its dimensions were very much less than those stated in
the Book of Jonah.

Jonah obeyed the Lord this time and began to preach. "Yet forty days,"
cried he, "and Nineveh shall be overthrown." How the prophet made
himself understood is an open question! Either the Lord taught him their
language, or he miraculously enabled them to understand Hebrew. Further,
they worshipped Baal, and Jonah preached to them in the name of his
foreign God. According to ancient, and to a large extent modern custom,
we should expect them in such a case to kill the presumptuous prophet,
or at least to shut him up as a madman. Yet they did nothing of the
kind. On the contrary, "the people of Nineveh believed God." Even the
king was converted. He covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.
He also decreed that neither man nor beast in the city should eat
or drink anything; but, said he, "let man and beast be covered with
sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from
his evil way." What an enormous consumption of sackcloth there must have
been! The merchants who sold it did a surprising business, and no doubt
quotations went up immensely. We wonder, indeed, how they managed
to supply such a sudden and universal demand. And what a sight was
presented by the whole population of the city! Men, women, and children,
high and low, rich and poor, were all arrayed in the same dingy
garments. Even the horses, cows, pigs and sheep, were similarly attired.
Wh