My aunt said that those birds were formerly kept in this country for the same purpose; but the English cormorants were not so tractable, for a thong was tied round their neck to prevent their eating the fish. Charles the First, she says, had his master of cormorants as well as his falconers.
11th, Sunday.—My uncle this morning repeated his advice never to allow ourselves to judge of detached phrases or single texts in the Bible, without carefully comparing them with similar passages in other parts; and he added, that it was very unjust to charge the Bible with the errors of its translators, or to ascribe the mistakes and inconsistencies of human learning to the inspired original. “The wonder is,” he says, “not that there are some mistakes, but that there are not many more, and that of those there should be so few of importance. It is, however, the duty of every body to make known those errors, slight as they are, and to try to remove all blemishes from a work of such high importance, as a correct translation in our own language. Words have now a much more definite meaning than they had a few centuries ago; and some words may then have fairly conveyed the original sense which is now greatly perverted by their continuance.
“For instance, in Exodus iii. 22, it appears that every woman is enjoined to borrow of her neighbour valuable jewels and raiment, and then to keep possession of them. But children,” said he, “should be taught that the Hebrew word, which our translators have rendered borrow, signifies to ask as a gift. It is the very word used in Psalm ii. 8,—‘Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance;’ and the fact was this: God told Moses that the Israelites should not go out of Egypt empty, but that every woman should ask her neighbour for certain valuable presents, and that He would dispose the Egyptians to give them. And all this seems to have been perfectly just, when you consider the slavery that the Israelites had been obliged to endure, and the hardships which had been inflicted on them, not only by the king, but by the people, who ‘made their lives bitter with hard bondage.’
“Josephus, the Jewish historian, represents this transaction agreeably to the true sense of the sacred text. He says, ‘the Egyptians made gifts to the Hebrews; some in order to induce them to depart quickly, and others on account of their neighbourhood and friendship for them.’
“As an additional confirmation of this being the true meaning of the expression,” my uncle continued, “we may recollect that the custom of giving, receiving, and even demanding presents is common to all parts of the East at this day; it is especially practised on the arrival or taking leave of strangers, and therefore may be well applied, in this case, to the departure of the Israelites. It seems to have been the same in all ages; for I need scarcely remind you of the ‘gold, and spices of very great store, and precious stones,’ that the Queen of Sheba gave to Solomon; nor of the magnificent gifts he presented to her when she was going away, even ‘all her desire, whatsoever she asked, beside that which Solomon gave her of his royal bounty.’ Nor is this exchange of presents looked upon as any degradation to dignity, nor any mark of a rapacious meanness.
“I have been the more desirous to explain that passage, because, from the ambiguity of one word the Israelites have been accused of cheating the Egyptians; and, what is of more consequence, it has been said that they were commanded to do so. But when the word is corrected, you see that these calumnies at once fall to the ground. And I would recommend you all to adopt a general rule in reading the scriptures, of which I have found the benefit. Whenever you meet with any expression that seems to be inconsistent with the moral justice of God—pause—compare the different parts where the same, or a similar phrase, occurs, and, before you come to a rash conclusion, study the acceptation that the words had at the period when the present version was made. If it requires a knowledge of the original language, apply to some learned person; not so much to reason for you, as to furnish the data on which to satisfy yourselves. However bounded may be our notions of the qualities of the Deity, and though his attributes far transcend our conception, yet it is certain that our ideas of justice must have been derived from principles implanted by Him; and no decree of His can ever be contrary to that justice—for the nature of God is immutable: He is ‘the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.’”
12th.—I am sure, Mamma, that you must feel very grateful to Colonel Travers for all the interesting things which I have picked up from him, and which I put in my journal for your amusement. To-day there was a conversation about our fisheries, and he related two facts which I am in hopes will be quite new to you.
You know that the great cod fishery which supplies almost all Europe with salt-fish, is on the sand-bank that extends from the island of Newfoundland. The water is from twenty to sixty fathoms in depth; and when the Colonel was returning from Canada with his regiment, he persuaded the Captain of the ship to stop for some hours on this bank, in order to catch cod for the soldiers. He saw a great many hooked with long lines and pulled up; and he observed, that when that was done very rapidly the air-bladder burst, and pushed part of the stomach out of the mouth. He explained to us that it is the air-bladder that enables fish to raise or lower themselves in the water, by taking in or letting out more or less air; but this they can only do gradually; and therefore when the air has been highly condensed at the bottom of the sea, the pressure of fifty or sixty fathoms of water, it expands the bladder more quickly than the fish has the power of giving it vent. The air-bladder is cured or salted with the fish, and is then called the sound.
This led the conversation to the different depths which are inhabited by different classes of fish. My uncle told us that turbots, soles, and other flat fish, are not furnished with an air-bladder, because they never quit the bottom of the sea; and Colonel Travers, to prove that some fish are not intended to sink very far below the surface, mentioned the following curious circumstance. When a whale is attacked by a sword-fish, he immediately dives; and the sword-fish, not being calculated by Nature to bear the enormous pressure of the sea at very great depth, is obliged to withdraw his weapon;—if he cannot speedily extricate it, he dies. My uncle said that this fact helped to explain the facility with which those great monsters are killed by our Greenland fishermen: when a whale is struck by a harpoon, he imagines it to be a sword-fish, and, as usual, dives; this he does with such velocity, that the harpooner is obliged to throw water on the part of the boat over which the harpoon-line runs, to prevent its taking fire; but the power of diving is probably limited even in a whale, and the length of line, perhaps a mile or two, which he has taken out and is obliged to drag through the water, at last tires him—he stops—and the men, by slowly pulling in the line, in fact haul the boat towards him; again he sets off—he is again tired—and is ultimately exhausted and killed by fatigue! If he ran straight out, near the surface, no line could be long enough, or strong enough, to check him—whenever a whale does do so, the line snaps, and he escapes.
13th.—The last thing that Colonel Travers told us—for I am sorry to say he is gone away—was a pretty little story that he learned at Ceylon.