s upon him--but in vain:
he is a bachelor still. Like some other animals mentioned in history,
he thinks and talks like a man. He is exceedingly intelligent, and
seems to have as much sense as 20,000 ordinary men or 21,000 women.
He can sing with a voice of tremendous compass, from the sweet piping
of a nightingale down to far below the deepest tones of the largest
organ, or the noise made by discharges of artillery. Sometimes when
he sings it shakes the ground for miles around, and if at sea causes
a storm. His favourite songs are "A Life on the Ocean Wave," "What
are the Wild Waves Saying," "Down by the Deep Sad Sea," and such
like. He plays all the musical instruments in the world. His whistle
can be heard a distance of 100 miles, his shout 50 miles, and his
whisper 10 miles. Of course, in an active life of 5000 years, a life
almost as long as some Hindoo patriarchs, he has seen and heard, and
done, many astonishing things. He relates that he once rescued a
travelling menagerie at sea, he swallowed the whole lot of animals,
and the woman in charge of them, let them roam about inside of him
and enjoy themselves, and then landed them safely on dry land at the
end of 48 hours. He says that he was in Arabia, and saw that
remarkable occurrence of the moon coming down and going into
Mahomet's sleeves, and there and then he objected to the whole
proceeding. The sea-serpent is 15 miles long and 50 feet in diameter,
his skin is of a horny nature, but harder than steel, and about 5
feet thick. He travels at the rate of 200 miles per hour, and can
carry 120 times as much as the "Great Eastern." If he was coming up
to the Queen's Wharf, Melbourne, when his head was at the wharf, his
body would reach right down the River Yarra out in the Bay past
Williamstown, and the Traffic would have to be stopped in the river
whilst he was unloading. The sea-serpent is rather a large eater.
Since he reached full growth, namely, for the last 4000 years, he has
swallowed a whole whale every morning for breakfast except once. The
reason of his going without his breakfast that once is explained in
the following manner:--

The reader will remember the account of Jonah and the Whale in the
Talmud. It states that when Jonah was in the whale's belly, it went
out of the Mediterranean right around Africa into the Red Sea, and
that Jonah looked out through the eyes of the whale and saw the place
where the children of Israel crossed the Red Sea. The sea