“And that immortalized Rondo, no doubt,” said Babbalanja. “Ha! ha! pity he fared not like the fat porpoise frozen and tombed in an iceberg; its icy shroud drifting south, soon melted away, and down, out of sight, sunk the dead.”
“Well, so much for amber,” cried Media. “Now, Mohi, go on about Farnoo.”
“Know, then, my lord, that Farnoo is more like ambergris than amber.”
“Is it? then, pray, tell us something on that head. You know all about ambergris, too, I suppose.”
“Every thing about all things, my lord. Ambergris is found both on land and at sea. But especially, are lumps of it picked up on the spicy coasts of Jovanna; indeed, all over the atolls and reefs in the eastern quarter of Mardi.”
“But what is this ambergris? Braid-Beard,” said Babbalanja.
“Aquovi, the chymist, pronounced it the fragments of mushrooms growing at the bottom of the sea; Voluto held, that like naptha, it springs from fountains down there. But it is neither.”
“I have heard,” said Yoomy, “that it is the honey-comb of bees, fallen from flowery cliffs into the brine.”
“Nothing of the kind,” said Mohi. “Do I not know all about it, minstrel? Ambergris is the petrified gall-stones of crocodiles.”
“What!” cried Babbalanja, “comes sweet scented ambergris from those musky and chain-plated river cavalry? No wonder, then, their flesh is so fragrant; their upper jaws as the visors of vinaigrettes.”