Moby Dick; Or, The Whale

Of the Afric Temple

The narrator cites the venerable John Leo, an old Barbary traveller, who documented a strange temple near the sea whose rafters and beams were made of whale bones. Local people believed a secret divine power prevented whales from passing without immediate death, though the truth involved rocks extending two miles into the sea that wounded whales. They preserved a whale’s rib of incredible length as a miracle—its convex part forming an arch unreachable even by a man on camelback. John Leo reported this rib had lain there a hundred years. Local historians claimed a prophet who prophesied of Mahomet came from this temple, and some asserted that the Prophet Jonah was cast forth by the whale at the temple’s base. The narrator leaves the reader at this Afric Temple of the Whale, suggesting silent worship for fellow Nantucketers and whalemen.

第一百零五章 Does the Whale’s Magnitude Diminish?—Will He Perish?

This chapter addresses two fundamental questions: whether whales have degenerated in size over time, and whether the species faces eventual extinction through human hunting. The narrative frames Leviathan as a creature emerging from “the head-waters of the Eternities,” establishing the cosmic scope of the inquiry.

Magnitude of Fossil Whales

Contrary to what one might expect, investigation reveals that modern whales actually exceed in magnitude the fossil whales found in the Tertiary geological period. Furthermore, among Tertiary whales themselves, those from later formations are larger than those from earlier periods. The largest pre-adamite whale fossil discovered—the Alabama specimen—measures less than seventy feet in skeleton length, while modern large whales measure seventy-two feet, and sperm whales have been captured near one hundred feet long.