{"id":"01KJNXJV8QZBWBRHC94714Y4RV","cid":"bafkreia4ux4cd6d7hcl7cb4wiucuibn6w3jvo7g65jxbghbdhtatgs3vmq","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":1007859,"char_start":1000204,"chunk_index":141,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1914,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"line-of-battle-ship.\r\n\r\nSince I have undertaken to manhandle this Leviathan, it behooves me to\r\napprove myself omnisciently exhaustive in the enterprise; not\r\noverlooking the minutest seminal germs of his blood, and spinning him\r\nout to the uttermost coil of his bowels. Having already described him\r\nin most of his present habitatory and anatomical peculiarities, it now\r\nremains to magnify him in an archæological, fossiliferous, and\r\nantediluvian point of view. Applied to any other creature than the\r\nLeviathan—to an ant or a flea—such portly terms might justly be deemed\r\nunwarrantably grandiloquent. But when Leviathan is the text, the case\r\nis altered. Fain am I to stagger to this emprise under the weightiest\r\nwords of the dictionary. And here be it said, that whenever it has been\r\nconvenient to consult one in the course of these dissertations, I have\r\ninvariably used a huge quarto edition of Johnson, expressly purchased\r\nfor that purpose; because that famous lexicographer’s uncommon personal\r\nbulk more fitted him to compile a lexicon to be used by a whale author\r\nlike me.\r\n\r\nOne often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject,\r\nthough it may seem but an ordinary one. How, then, with me, writing of\r\nthis Leviathan? Unconsciously my chirography expands into placard\r\ncapitals. Give me a condor’s quill! Give me Vesuvius’ crater for an\r\ninkstand! Friends, hold my arms! For in the mere act of penning my\r\nthoughts of this Leviathan, they weary me, and make me faint with their\r\noutreaching comprehensiveness of sweep, as if to include the whole\r\ncircle of the sciences, and all the generations of whales, and men, and\r\nmastodons, past, present, and to come, with all the revolving panoramas\r\nof empire on earth, and throughout the whole universe, not excluding\r\nits suburbs. Such, and so magnifying, is the virtue of a large and\r\nliberal theme! We expand to its bulk. To produce a mighty book, you\r\nmust choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be\r\nwritten on the flea, though many there be who have tried it.\r\n\r\nEre entering upon the subject of Fossil Whales, I present my\r\ncredentials as a geologist, by stating that in my miscellaneous time I\r\nhave been a stone-mason, and also a great digger of ditches, canals and\r\nwells, wine-vaults, cellars, and cisterns of all sorts. Likewise, by\r\nway of preliminary, I desire to remind the reader, that while in the\r\nearlier geological strata there are found the fossils of monsters now\r\nalmost completely extinct; the subsequent relics discovered in what are\r\ncalled the Tertiary formations seem the connecting, or at any rate\r\nintercepted links, between the antichronical creatures, and those whose\r\nremote posterity are said to have entered the Ark; all the Fossil\r\nWhales hitherto discovered belong to the Tertiary period, which is the\r\nlast preceding the superficial formations. And though none of them\r\nprecisely answer to any known species of the present time, they are yet\r\nsufficiently akin to them in general respects, to justify their taking\r\nrank as Cetacean fossils.\r\n\r\nDetached broken fossils of pre-adamite whales, fragments of their bones\r\nand skeletons, have within thirty years past, at various intervals,\r\nbeen found at the base of the Alps, in Lombardy, in France, in England,\r\nin Scotland, and in the States of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.\r\nAmong the more curious of such remains is part of a skull, which in the\r\nyear 1779 was disinterred in the Rue Dauphine in Paris, a short street\r\nopening almost directly upon the palace of the Tuileries; and bones\r\ndisinterred in excavating the great docks of Antwerp, in Napoleon’s\r\ntime. Cuvier pronounced these fragments to have belonged to some\r\nutterly unknown Leviathanic species.\r\n\r\nBut by far the most wonderful of all Cetacean relics was the almost\r\ncomplete vast skeleton of an extinct monster, found in the year 1842,\r\non the plantation of Judge Creagh, in Alabama. The awe-stricken\r\ncredulous slaves in the vicinity took it for the bones of one of the\r\nfallen angels. The Alabama doctors declared it a huge reptile, and\r\nbestowed upon it the name of Basilosaurus. But some specimen bones of\r\nit being taken across the sea to Owen, the English Anatomist, it turned\r\nout that this alleged reptile was a whale, though of a departed\r\nspecies. A significant illustration of the fact, again and again\r\nrepeated in this book, that the skeleton of the whale furnishes but\r\nlittle clue to the shape of his fully invested body. So Owen\r\nrechristened the monster Zeuglodon; and in his paper read before the\r\nLondon Geological Society, pronounced it, in substance, one of the most\r\nextraordinary creatures which the mutations of the globe have blotted\r\nout of existence.\r\n\r\nWhen I stand among these mighty Leviathan skeletons, skulls, tusks,\r\njaws, ribs, and vertebræ, all characterized by partial resemblances to\r\nthe existing breeds of sea-monsters; but at the same time bearing on\r\nthe other hand similar affinities to the annihilated antichronical\r\nLeviathans, their incalculable seniors; I am, by a flood, borne back to\r\nthat wondrous period, ere time itself can be said to have begun; for\r\ntime began with man. Here Saturn’s grey chaos rolls over me, and I\r\nobtain dim, shuddering glimpses into those Polar eternities; when\r\nwedged bastions of ice pressed hard upon what are now the Tropics; and\r\nin all the 25,000 miles of this world’s circumference, not an\r\ninhabitable hand’s breadth of land was visible. Then the whole world\r\nwas the whale’s; and, king of creation, he left his wake along the\r\npresent lines of the Andes and the Himmalehs. Who can show a pedigree\r\nlike Leviathan? Ahab’s harpoon had shed older blood than the Pharaoh’s.\r\nMethuselah seems a school-boy. I look round to shake hands with Shem. I\r\nam horror-struck at this antemosaic, unsourced existence of the\r\nunspeakable terrors of the whale, which, having been before all time,\r\nmust needs exist after all humane ages are over.\r\n\r\nBut not alone has this Leviathan left his pre-adamite traces in the\r\nstereotype plates of nature, and in limestone and marl bequeathed his\r\nancient bust; but upon Egyptian tablets, whose antiquity seems to claim\r\nfor them an almost fossiliferous character, we find the unmistakable\r\nprint of his fin. In an apartment of the great temple of Denderah, some\r\nfifty years ago, there was discovered upon the granite ceiling a\r\nsculptured and painted planisphere, abounding in centaurs, griffins,\r\nand dolphins, similar to the grotesque figures on the celestial globe\r\nof the moderns. Gliding among them, old Leviathan swam as of yore; was\r\nthere swimming in that planisphere, centuries before Solomon was\r\ncradled.\r\n\r\nNor must there be omitted another strange attestation of the antiquity\r\nof the whale, in his own osseous post-diluvian reality, as set down by\r\nthe venerable John Leo, the old Barbary traveller.\r\n\r\n“Not far from the Sea-side, they have a Temple, the Rafters and Beams\r\nof which are made of Whale-Bones; for Whales of a monstrous size are\r\noftentimes cast up dead upon that shore. The Common People imagine,\r\nthat by a secret Power bestowed by God upon the Temple, no Whale can\r\npass it without immediate death. But the truth of the Matter is, that\r\non either side of the Temple, there are Rocks that shoot two Miles into\r\nthe Sea, and wound the Whales when they light upon ’em. They keep a\r\nWhale’s Rib of an incredible length for a Miracle, which lying upon the\r\nGround with its convex part uppermost, makes an Arch, the Head of which\r\ncannot be reached by a Man upon a Camel’s Back. This Rib (says John\r\nLeo) is said to have layn there a hundred Years before I saw it."},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJNXEDHZCC8DR4EPSQD0QP4P","peer_label":"moby-dick","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJNXECF9R1EZKS5Z7J8A8ZSB","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KJNXRBB6T80J76W1SQ34EG28","peer_label":"john leo","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:20.295Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNFGZ1SMJYAGJH4A3YQAR","peer_label":"leviathan concept","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"literary_concept","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:20.295Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNCK5BSX68A5N8M7FJK0Q","peer_label":"johnsons dictionary","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"book","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:20.295Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNFG0R91WX67PDK7D7WRP","peer_label":"fossil whales concept","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"biological_concept","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:20.295Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQ0F1BSXTYFF3ETFDPSFW","peer_label":"leviathanic species cuvier","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"extinct_species_concept","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:20.295Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQ266QTP0SWB27KXR1C54","peer_label":"extinct monster skeleton alabama","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"fossil","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:20.295Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQ34RHG9B68X2CDSGK8TK","peer_label":"ahab","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"literary_character","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:20.295Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQ3565XVJ1MVT4E6WPZRG","peer_label":"basilosaurus","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"scientific_name","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:20.295Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQ99X7QY4WX2CDD5VX4C7","peer_label":"zeuglodon","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"scientific_name","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:20.295Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQ3VQY3TW1H8QD1938WY6","peer_label":"judge creagh","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:20.295Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQE2M96DVTKW1BDX9XMEA","peer_label":"temple of denderah","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"ancient_structure","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:20.295Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQEDTG3FNMGFPF27YB24X","peer_label":"london geological society","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"organization","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:20.295Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQQ66BP9VVP24H8D947K0","peer_label":"whale-bone temple john leos account","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"structure","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:20.295Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXQT2ZNFBCGN9A682NHVK6","peer_label":"planisphere of denderah","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"artifact","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:20.295Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXRF6XFEF50VT6T98W9V98","peer_label":"giant whale rib john leos account","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"artifact","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:20.295Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNFP7FHZ941FHNX5NRDQ8","peer_label":"samuel johnson","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:20.295Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXP308DCWSE3EW0Z8TAS31","peer_label":"georges cuvier","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:20.295Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNNEETBQJWG0VC7VY1YZ0","peer_label":"tertiary period","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"geological_period","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:20.295Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXNP8M3YY61F42WBWEQAJ1","peer_label":"narrator moby dick","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"narrator","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:20.295Z"}},{"peer":"01KJNXSPMNVFRGV7NRHA7F6QBM","peer_label":"richard owen","predicate":"extracted_entity","properties":{"entity_type":"person","extracted_at":"2026-03-02T00:08:20.295Z"}}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-03-02T00:01:19.127Z","ts":"2026-03-02T00:08:21.715Z","edited_by":{"method":"system","user_id":"01KJ60XQBHJ0GBGTP9X8HXAPPM"}}