King Mombo

by Paul B. Du Chaillu

Then I thought of the whales, and of their huge size; that on land the elephant was the largest animal, and that in the sea the whale was the largest creature; and that, though the whale was so much larger that in the comparison the elephant was but a pigmy, yet the home of the whale is correspondingly greater than that of the elephant.

There are several varieties of whales. The Arctic and Greenland whale is from forty to fifty feet in length. Its enormous head is a third of the whole creature. There is also a species of whale which attains a length of eighty, and even eighty-five, feet.

How strange that several species of these huge creatures, on account of the peculiar formation of their throats, can only feed on the most minute crustaceans and pteropods. The fecundity of some of the species of the latter is so wonderful that they cover large areas of the northern and southern Atlantic and Pacific, and swarm in vast shoals, covering the sea for miles, showing their presence by a ruddy hue contrasting with the color of the water. What a feast the whales have when they come where these small creatures are! Their big mouths allow them to take in barrels of water filled with these minute organisms, and they are provided with a peculiar and delicate sieve, by which the water is drained off and the mass of pteropods taken into their stomachs.

I said to myself: “I am now sailing over the home of the whales, and I am going to the home of the elephants.”

But the poor whales and elephants are so much hunted that they become fewer in number every year; and I remembered how my grandmother used to worry at the thought of the disappearance of the whale, for no oil for lamps could then be procured, and what would people then do for light?

After thinking of the whales, I thought of the countless millions and varieties of fish that swim in the sea. I thought of the codfish, of the herring, and of the mackerel, and of their innumerable numbers, and of the many millions that are caught every year by man. Their vast shoals seem not to diminish in spite of all.

How intelligent are the codfish, and other fishes, in their migration. The cod come by countless millions to the same place to spawn. They make their appearance at the same time, year after year, often coming the very same day as the year before, and rarely more than a week before or after their usual time of arrival. After spawning they disappear, leaving stragglers remaining behind. No one knows where they go.

Then I thought of the relentless warfare among fishes, the big fish feeding on the smaller ones,—one single big fish eating hundreds of little ones in one day, the very big ones thousands. The number eaten every day is so great that no calculation can be made of those destroyed. But if it were not for this great destruction among themselves, the sea would become so thick with them, the water would become poisoned and they would all die, and the stench would spread the plague over the world and destroy man.

The second day we saw a sail in the offing, which relieved the loneliness of the sea. Human beings were on board. Man loves the sight of man. The ship passed close to ours and then the wake it left behind disappeared forever.

Towards evening the breeze freshened, the sky became dark, and clouds hung low and sped rapidly. During the night the whistling of the wind and the tossing of the ship told me that a storm was raging. We had entered in the meantime the wonderful Gulf Stream, with its warm water flowing northward. The gale was from the southwest.