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an important interval was sailing down the Peruvian coast,

when earthquakes caused the beach to gape.  Over this lip,

as over a slippery threshold, we now slide into the mouth.

Upon my word were I at Mackinaw, I should take this to be the inside

of an Indian wigwam.  Good Lord! is this the road that Jonah went?

The roof is about twelve feet high, and runs to a pretty sharp angle,

as if there were a regular ridge-pole there; while these ribbed,

arched, hairy sides, present us with those wondrous, half vertical,

scimitar-shaped slats of whalebone, say three hundred on a side,

which depending from the upper part of the head or crown bone,

form those Venetian blinds which have elsewhere been cursorily mentioned.

The edges of these bones are fringed with hairy fibres,

through which the Right Whale strains the water, and in whose

intricacies he retains the small fish, when openmouthed he goes

through the seas of brit in feeding time.  In the central blinds

of bone, as they stand in their natural order, there are certain

curious marks, curves, hollows, and ridges, whereby some whalemen

calculate the creature's age, as the age of an oak by its circular rings.

Though the certainty of this criterion is far from demonstrable,

yet it has the savor of analogical probability.  At any rate,

if we yield to it, we must grant a far greater age to the Right Whale