"Aquovi, the chymist, pronounced it the fragments of mushrooms growing
at the bottom of the sea; Voluto held, that like naptha, it springs
from fountains down there. But it is neither."

"I have heard," said Yoomy, "that it is the honey-comb of bees, fallen
from flowery cliffs into the brine."

"Nothing of the kind," said Mohi. "Do I not know all about it,
minstrel? Ambergris is the petrified gall-stones of crocodiles."

"What!" cried Babbalanja, "comes sweet scented ambergris from those
musky and chain-plated river cavalry? No wonder, then, their flesh is
so fragrant; their upper jaws as the visors of vinaigrettes."

"Nay, you are all wrong," cried King Media.

Then, laughing to himself:--"It's pleasant to sit by, a demi-god, and
hear the surmisings of mortals, upon things they know nothing about;
theology, or amber, or ambergris, it's all the same. But then, did I
always out with every thing I know, there would be no conversing with
these comical creatures.

"Listen, old Mohi; ambergris is a morbid secretion of the Spermaceti
whale; for like you mortals, the whale is at times a sort of
hypochondriac and dyspeptic. You must know, subjects, that in
antediluvian times, the Spermaceti whale was much hunted by sportsmen,
that being accounted better pastime, than pursuing the Behemoths on
shore. Besides, it was a lucrative diversion. Now, sometimes upon
striking the monster, it would start off in a dastardly fright,