I summoned up all my courage, and being tired of holding on by the spar, resolved to mount upon his back, which I accomplished without difficulty, and I found the seat on his shoulders before the dorsal fin, not only secure but very comfortable.  The animal, unaccustomed to carry weight, made several attempts to get rid of me, but not being able to sink I retained my seat.  He then increased his velocity, and we went on over a smooth sea, at the rate of about three knots an hour.  For two days I continued my course to the southward, upon my novel conveyance, during which I had nothing to eat except a few small barnacles, and some parasitical vermin, peculiar to the animal, which I discovered under his fins.  I also found a small remora, or sucking fish, near his tail, but when I put it to my mouth, it fixed itself so firmly on both my lips that I thought they were sealed for ever.  No force could detach it, and there it hung like a padlock for many hours, to my great mortification and annoyance, but at last it died from being so long out of water, and when it dropped off I devoured it.

On the third day I observed land at a distance; it appeared to be an island, but I had no idea what it could be.  My steed continued his course straight towards it, and being blind ran his nose right upon the shore; before he found out his mistake I slipped off his back, and climbing the steep side of the island, was once more, as I thought, on terra firm.  Tired with long watching, I lay down and fell fast asleep.

I was awakened by something touching me on the shoulder, and opening my eyes, I perceived that I was surrounded by several people, whom I naturally inferred to be the natives of the island.  They were clad in dresses, which appeared to me to be made of black leather, consisting of a pair of trousers, and a long pea-jacket, very similar to those worn by the Esquimaux Indians, which we occasionally fell in with in the Northern Ocean.  They each held a long harpoon, formed entirely of bone, in their right hands.

I was not a little surprised at being addressed in the Patois dialect of the Basques in my own country, which is spoken about Bayonne and other parts adjacent to the Pyrennees.  To their questions I answered that I was the only survivor of the crew of a whaler, which had been frozen up in the ice, during the winter; that she had filled with water, and that I had saved myself upon the back of a shark.

They expressed no surprise at my unheard-of conveyance to the island; on the contrary, they merely observed, that sharks were too vicious to ride; and asked me to accompany them to their town, an invitation which I gladly accepted.  As I walked along I observed that the island was composed of white porous pumice stone, without the least symptoms of vegetation; not even a piece of moss could I discover—­nothing but the bare pumice stone, with thousands of beautiful green lizards, about ten inches long, playing about