Symzonia: Voyage of Discovery

At night all are assembled in the city, and each stand is crowned with two of these exemplary birds. The contemplation of these orderly, discreet, and beautiful amphibia, afforded me much pleasure, and gave rise to many delightful anticipations. It appeared certain to me that they, in common with seals, whales, and mackerel, were visiters from the internal world through the southern opening, which they were admirably formed to pass and repass; for they moved with great facility, in the water, and could exist under it as well as fish. On land they walked with as much ease as men, and in the same erect posture. It occurred to me that a world, in which the brute creation were so neatly formed, so polished in their manners, so social in their habits, and so quiet and well behaved, must, if men existed in it, be the abode of a race perfect in their kind. I had no apprehension of the air being unhealthy in the internal world as suggested by Capt. Symmes, because the climate in which these visiters are found in the greatest numbers is the healthiest of the external world, which indicates that they are accustomed to good air, or they would not affect this salubrious region. Again, I had observed all these amphibia to be of a remarkably gentle and harmless disposition. The sea-lion, sea-elephant, and common seal, together with the king-penguin, the Gentoo, macaroni, and jackass-penguin, all of different habits, yet obviously of the same origin, accommodated themselves on the same island, fed in the same sea, and on the same food, without interfering with and without ever being observed to offer violence to each other; from which I inferred that the inhabitants of the internal world, influenced by the same causes, must be of a remarkably pacific, and gentle disposition.