“Toward the sea turning my troubled eye I saw the fish (if fish I may it cleepe) That makes the sea before his face to flye And with his flaggie finnes doth seeme to sweepe The fomie waves out of the dreadfull deep. The huge Leviathan, dame Nature’s wonder, Making his sport, that manie makes to weep: A Sword-fish small, him from the rest did sunder, That, in his throat him pricking softly under, His wide abysse him forced forth to spewe, That all the sea did roare like heavens thunder, And all the waves were stained with filthie hewe. Hereby I learned have not to despise Whatever thing seems small in common eyes.” Baron Sahartur, in a letter from Quebec in 1783, described a conflict between a whale and a sword-fish which took place within gun shot of his frigate. He remarks: “We were perfectly charmed when we saw the sword-fish jump out of the water in order to dart its spear into the body of the whale when obliged to take breath. This entertaining show lasted at least two hours, sometimes to the starboard and sometimes to the larboard of the ship. The sailors, among whom superstition prevails as much as among the Egyptians, took this for a presage of some mighty storm.” There are two great sword-fisheries in the world, one on the coast of New England, and the other in the waters about Sicily. The former gives employment, in different years, to from twenty to forty vessels, and from sixty to one hundred and twenty men; the latter to over three hundred boats and seventeen hundred men. In Italy the annual product of the fishery amounts to about 320,000 pounds, while in New England, counting the fish taken incidentally by halibut and mackerel vessels, the yield is at least 1,000,000 pounds.