Page:Twenty Thousand Verne Frith 1876.pdf/11

 known, which spurted through its blow-holes two columns of water mixed with air and steam.

A similar occurrence was observed on the 23rd July in the same year, in the Pacific Ocean, by the Christopher Columbus of the West India and Pacific Steam Navigation Company. On this occasion the wonderful cetacean must have moved from place to place with extreme velocity, since the Governor Higginson and the Christopher Columbus had observed it at two places separate more than seven hundred nautical leagues.

Fifteen days later, two thousand leagues from the above latitude, the Helvetia, of the National Steamship Company, and the Shannon, of the Royal Mail, sailing between Europe and America, noticed the monster respectively 42° 15' N. lat., and 60° 35' W. long., of the meridian. of Greenwich. In this simultaneous observation the minimum length of the mammifer was estimated at 350 feet, for the Shannon and Helvetia were smaller than it, inasmuch as they measured 300 feet only from stem to stern. Now the very largest whales—those which inhabit the neighbourhood of the Aleutian Islands, Kulammak and Umgillick—have never exceeded 180 feet, even if they reached that length.

These reports arrived in quick succession. Further observations made on board the Transatlantic “liner” Pereire; a collision between the Etna of the Inman Line and the monster; an official report sent in by the officers of the French frigate La Normandie; a very serious report obtained by the Secretary of State from Commodore Fitz-James of the Lord Clyde, stirred up public curiosity. In a country possessing some sense of humour the subject would have been treated as a joke,