There he stands, champing and foaming upon the iron track; his great heart a furnace of glowing coals; his lymphatic blood is boiling in his veins; the strength of a thousand horses is nerving his sinews—he pants to be gone.
He would "snake" St. Peter's across the desert of Sahara if he could be fairly hitched to it, but there is a little sober-eyed, tobacco-chewing man in the saddle, who holds him in with one finger, and can take away his breath in a moment should he grow restive and vicious.
I am always deeply interested in this man; for, begrimed as he may be with coal, diluted in oil and steam, I regard him as the genius of the whole machinery, as the physical mind of that huge steam horse.
BIG FORTUNES FOUND IN DISEASED WHALES.
ONE LEVIATHAN YIELDED $100,000.
A Dirty-Looking Lump of Ambergris Is
Worth More Than Half Its
Weight in Gold.
Ambergris is one of the most valuable products of the sea. The mariner who spies floating on the waves a grayish mass, fatty in appearance, will, if he knows what ambergris is, betray considerable excitement, for the substance fetches high prices.
Captain James Earle, of New Bedford, Massachusetts, is said to have been the luckiest of all skippers in the old whaling days. From a single sperm whale he realized more than a hundred thousand dollars. It was not the ninety barrels of oil which gave the leviathan its extraordinary value, for that was sold for something like four thousand dollars; but within the whale's vast interior there was found a solid piece of ambergris weighing seven hundred and eighty pounds. This was sold in chunks in all markets of the world for about one hundred thousand dollars.
The finest piece, if not the largest, obtained in recent years weighed one hundred and sixty-three pounds. It was sold in London in 1891.
As to what ambergris is, we may quote the Philadelphia Saturday Evening post: