Fresh-water fish are only to be obtained in Mondoldo by the artificial process above mentioned; as the streams and brooks abound not in trout or other Waltonian prey.

Taken all floundering from the sea, Borabolla’s fish, passing through their regular training for the table, and daily tended by their keepers, in course of time became quite tame and communicative.  To prove which, calling his Head Ranger, the king bade him administer the customary supply of edibles.

Accordingly, mouthfuls were thrown into the ponds.  Whereupon, the fish darted in a shoal toward the margin; some leaping out of the water in their eagerness.  Crouching on the bank, the Ranger now called several by name, patted their scales, carrying on some heathenish nursery-talk, like St. Anthony, in ancient Coptic, instilling virtuous principles into his finny flock on the sea shore.

But alas, for the hair-shirted old dominie’s backsliding disciples.  For, of all nature’s animated kingdoms, fish are the most unchristian, inhospitable, heartless, and cold-blooded of creatures.  At least, so seem they to strangers; though at bottom, somehow, they must be all right.  And truly it is not to be wondered at, that the very reverend Anthony strove after the conversion of fish.  For, whoso shall Christianize, and by so doing, humanize the sharks, will do a greater good, by the saving of human life in all time to come, than though he made catechumens of the head-hunting Dyaks of Borneo, or the blood-bibbing Battas of Sumatra.  And are these Dyaks and Battas one whit better than tiger-sharks?  Nay, are they so good?  Were a Batta your intimate friend, you would often mistake an orang-outang for him; and have orang-outangs immortal souls?  True, the Battas believe in a hereafter; but of what sort?  Full of Blue-Beards and bloody bones.  So, also, the sharks; who hold that Paradise is one vast Pacific, ploughed by navies of mortals, whom an endless gale forever drops into their maws.

Not wholly a surmise.  For, does it not appear a little unreasonable to imagine, that there is any creature, fish, flesh, or fowl, so little in love with life, as not to cherish hopes of a future state?  Why does man believe in it?  One reason, reckoned cogent, is, that he desires it.  Who shall say, then, that the leviathan this day harpooned on the coast of Japan, goes not straight to his ancestor, who rolled all Jonah, as a sweet morsel, under his tongue?

Though herein, some sailors are slow believers, or at best hold themselves in a state of philosophical suspense.  Say they—­“That catastrophe took place in the Mediterranean; and the only whales frequenting the Mediterranean, are of a sort having not a swallow large enough to pass a man entire; for those Mediterranean whales feed upon small things, as horses upon oats.”  But hence, the sailors draw a rash inference.  Are not the Straits of Gibralter wide enough to admit a sperm-whale, even though none have sailed through, since Nineveh and the gourd in its suburbs dried up?