intents a virgin territory as respects the
enquirer into natural history, still it is greatly destitute of the
treasures of the vegetable kingdom. I should, therefore, have tarried
some hundreds of miles more to the eastward, were it not for the inward
propensity that I feel to have the beast in question inspected and
suitably described and classed. For that matter," he continued, dropping
his voice, like one who imparts an important secret, "I am not without
hopes of persuading Ishmael to let me dissect it."

"You have seen the creature?"

"Not with the organs of sight; but with much more infallible instruments
of vision: the conclusions of reason, and the deductions of scientific
premises. I have watched the habits of the animal, young man; and can
fearlessly pronounce, by evidence that would be thrown away on ordinary
observers, that it is of vast dimensions, inactive, possibly torpid, of
voracious appetite, and, as it now appears by the direct testimony of
this venerable hunter, ferocious and carnivorous!"

"I should be better pleased, stranger," said Paul, on whom the Doctor's
description was making a very sensible impression, "to be sure the
creature was a beast at all."

"As to that, if I wanted evidence of a fact, which is abundantly
apparent by the habits of the animal, I have the word of Ishmael
himself. A reason can be given for my smallest deductions. I am not
troubled, young man, with a vulgar and idle curiosity, but all my
aspirations after knowledge, as I humbly believe, are, first, for
the advancement of learning, and, secondly, for the benefit of my
fellow-creatures. I pined greatly in secret to know the contents of the
tent, which Ishmael guarded so carefully, and which he had covenanted
that I should swear, (jurare per deos) not to approach nigher than
a defined number of cubits, for a definite period of time. Your
jusjurandum, or oath, is a serious matter, and not to be dealt in
lightly; but, as my expedition depended on complying, I consented to the
act, reserving to myself at all times the power of distant observation.
It is now some ten days since Ishmael, pitying the state in which he
saw me, a humble lover of science, imparted the fact that the vehicle
contained a beast, which he was carrying into the prairies as a decoy,
by which he intends to entrap others of the same genus, or perhaps
species. Since then, my task has been reduced simply to watch the
habits of the animal, and to record th