It was so tall that its head reached the sky, while its feet rested on
the bottom of the ocean; and he affords us some slight notion of the
depth of the sea by informing us that a carpenter's axe, which had
accidentally fallen in, had not reached the bottom in seven years. The
same Rabbi saw "a frog as large as a village containing sixty houses."
Huge as this frog was, the snake that swallowed it must have been the
very identical serpent of Scandinavian mythology, which encircled the
earth; yet a crow gobbled up this serpent, and then flew to the top of a
cedar, which was as broad as sixteen waggons placed side by
side.--Sailors' "yarns," as they are spun to marvel-loving old ladies in
our jest-books, are as nothing to the rabbinical accounts of "strange
fish," some with eyes like the moon, others horned, and 300 miles in
length. Not less wonderful are some four-footed creatures. The effigy of
the unicorn, familiar to every schoolboy, on the royal arms of Great
Britain, affords no adequate idea of the actual dimensions of that
remarkable animal. Since a unicorn one day old is as large as Mount
Tabor, it may readily be supposed that Noah could not possibly have got
a full-grown one into the ark; he therefore secured it by its horn to
the side, and thus the creature was saved alive.
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