That for six thousand years -- and no one knows how many millions of ages before -- the great whales should have been spouting all over the sea, and sprinkling and mistifying the gardens of the deep, as with so many sprinkling or mistifying pots; and that for some centuries back, thousands of hunters should have been close by the fountain of the whale, watching these sprinklings and spoutings -- that all this should be, and yet, that down to this blessed minute (fifteen and a quarter minutes past one o'clock P. M. of this sixteenth day of December, A. D. 1851), it should still remain a problem, whether these spoutings are, after all, really water, or nothing but vapor -- this is surely a noteworthy thing.

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