September 9:
“On this day they lost sight of land; and many, fearful of not being able to return for a long time to see it, sighed and shed tears. But the admiral . . . when that day the sailors reckoned the distance 18 leagues, said he had counted only 15, having decided to lessen the record so that the crew would not think they were as far from Spain as in fact they were.”
So a great head shrinks the distance . . .
shrinks the very globe itself:—for it was only the bold and persistent acceptance of cosmographical errors in the mind of Columbus—shrinking the earth by a quarter, and juggling Cypango until it fell among the Virgin Islands—that made possible the discovery . . .
(and in San Salvador, Columbus noted among the natives that “the whole forehead and head is very broad”—the result of artificially flattening the skulls of infants, by pressing them between boards.
Monday September 17:
Passing the true north, Columbus—making the “pilot’s blessing”—marked the North Star, and noted that the needle now began pointing to the west of north, instead of to the customary east.
“All the sailors feared greatly and all became very sad, and began to murmur under their breaths again, without making it known altogether to Christopher Columbus, seeing such a new thing, and one they had never seen or experienced, and there they feared they were in another world.”
M OBY -D ICK : —“At first, the steel went round and round, quivering and vibrating at either end; but at last it settled to its place, when Ahab, who had been intently watching for this result, stepped frankly back from the binnacle, and pointing his stretched arm towards it, exclaimed,—‘Look ye, for yourselves, if Ahab be not Lord of the level loadstone! . . .’
“One after another they peered in, for nothing but their own eyes could persuade such ignorance as theirs, and one after another they slunk away.”
Whale, boobie, sandpiper, dove, crab, and boatswain bird—all were signs of land . . . for hitherto none had sailed far enough to see such things other than close to land . . .
and there was sargasso weed, rumored to trap ships as in a web . . . detritus, perhaps, of Atlantis . . .
From the posterior, the vault of the vagina, the sperm’s journey measures, perhaps, five inches. The cilia in the oviduct have an outward stroke, against the motion of the sperm . . .
(Columbus reported the usual course of the sargasso weed to be from west to east . . .
In addition, there are the folds and ridges, like waves, of the mucous membrane, and the powerful leukocytes, white monsters that attack the sperm.
“Forward progress of the human spermatozoon is at the rate of about 1.5 mm a minute which, in relation to their respective lengths, compares well with average swimming ability for man.”
Driven by temperature and secretions, the sperm’s action is a fight against time; for
“A spermatozoon is only fertile if it is capable of performing powerful movements.”
Olson, on Melville: “He only rode his own space once—M OBY -D ICK . He had to be wild or he was nothing in particular. He had to go fast, like an American . . .”
Thus, the spermatozoon, like the salmon, swimming “a spiral course upstream.”
September 19:
“. . . but as the land never appeared they presently believed nothing, concluding from those signs since they failed, that they were going through another world whence they would never return.”
September 24:
“. . . they said that it was a great madness and homicidal on their part, to venture their lives in following out
“On this day they lost sight of land; and many, fearful of not being able to return for a long time to see it, sighed and shed tears. But the admiral . . . when that day the sailors reckoned the distance 18 leagues, said he had counted only 15, having decided to lessen the record so that the crew would not think they were as far from Spain as in fact they were.”
So a great head shrinks the distance . . .
shrinks the very globe itself:—for it was only the bold and persistent acceptance of cosmographical errors in the mind of Columbus—shrinking the earth by a quarter, and juggling Cypango until it fell among the Virgin Islands—that made possible the discovery . . .
(and in San Salvador, Columbus noted among the natives that “the whole forehead and head is very broad”—the result of artificially flattening the skulls of infants, by pressing them between boards.
Monday September 17:
Passing the true north, Columbus—making the “pilot’s blessing”—marked the North Star, and noted that the needle now began pointing to the west of north, instead of to the customary east.
“All the sailors feared greatly and all became very sad, and began to murmur under their breaths again, without making it known altogether to Christopher Columbus, seeing such a new thing, and one they had never seen or experienced, and there they feared they were in another world.”
M OBY -D ICK : —“At first, the steel went round and round, quivering and vibrating at either end; but at last it settled to its place, when Ahab, who had been intently watching for this result, stepped frankly back from the binnacle, and pointing his stretched arm towards it, exclaimed,—‘Look ye, for yourselves, if Ahab be not Lord of the level loadstone! . . .’
“One after another they peered in, for nothing but their own eyes could persuade such ignorance as theirs, and one after another they slunk away.”
Whale, boobie, sandpiper, dove, crab, and boatswain bird—all were signs of land . . . for hitherto none had sailed far enough to see such things other than close to land . . .
and there was sargasso weed, rumored to trap ships as in a web . . . detritus, perhaps, of Atlantis . . .
From the posterior, the vault of the vagina, the sperm’s journey measures, perhaps, five inches. The cilia in the oviduct have an outward stroke, against the motion of the sperm . . .
(Columbus reported the usual course of the sargasso weed to be from west to east . . .
In addition, there are the folds and ridges, like waves, of the mucous membrane, and the powerful leukocytes, white monsters that attack the sperm.
“Forward progress of the human spermatozoon is at the rate of about 1.5 mm a minute which, in relation to their respective lengths, compares well with average swimming ability for man.”
Driven by temperature and secretions, the sperm’s action is a fight against time; for
“A spermatozoon is only fertile if it is capable of performing powerful movements.”
Olson, on Melville: “He only rode his own space once—M OBY -D ICK . He had to be wild or he was nothing in particular. He had to go fast, like an American . . .”
Thus, the spermatozoon, like the salmon, swimming “a spiral course upstream.”
September 19:
“. . . but as the land never appeared they presently believed nothing, concluding from those signs since they failed, that they were going through another world whence they would never return.”
September 24:
“. . . they said that it was a great madness and homicidal on their part, to venture their lives in following out
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