Ahab's Adventure's In Wonderland; or The Rabbit

Chapter Twenty-Seven

So far as what there may be of a narrative in this book; and, indeed, as indirectly touching one or two very interesting and curious particulars in the habits of rabbits, the foregoing chapter, in its earlier part, is as important a one as will be found in this volume; but the leading matter of it requires to be still further and more familiarly enlarged upon, in order to be adequately understood, and moreover to take away any incredulity which a profound ignorance of the entire subject may induce in some minds, as to the natural verity of the main points of this affair.

I care not to perform this part of my task methodically; but shall be content to produce the desired impression by separate citations of items, practically or reliably known to me as a farmers; and from these citations, I take it-- the conclusion aimed at will naturally follow of itself.

First: I have personally known three instances where a rabbit, after stealing a carrot, has effected a complete escape; and, after an interval (in one instance of three years), has been again seen in the same garden where the first carrot was seized. In the instance where three years intervened between the absconding of the two carrots; and I think it may have been something more than that; the man who noticed them happening, in the interval, left on a trading ship on a voyage to Africa, went ashore there, joined a discovery party, and penetrated far into the interior, where he travelled for a period of nearly two years, often endangered by serpents, savages, tigers, poisonous miasmas, with all the other common perils incident to wandering in the heart of unknown regions. Meanwhile, the rabbit must also have been on its travels; no doubt it had thrice circumnavigated the forest, brushing with its flanks all corners of the county; but to no purpose. This rabbit and this man again came together, and the one again vanquished the other. I say I, myself, have known three instances similar to this; that is in two of them I saw distinctive marks on the rabbits; and, upon the second visit, saw those same respective marks. Here are three instances, then, which I personally know the truth of; but I have heard of many other instances from persons whose veracity in the matter there is no good ground to impeach.

I do not know where I can find a better place than just here, to make mention of one or two other things, which to me seem important, as in printed form establishing in all respects the reasonableness of the whole story of the White Rabbit, more especially the catastrophe. For this is one of those disheartening instances where truth requires full as much bolstering as error. So ignorant are most city dwellers of some of the plainest and most palpable wonders of the world, that without some hints touching the plain facts, historical and otherwise, of agriculture, they might scout at Moby Dick as a monstrous fable, or still worse and more detestable, a hideous and intolerable allegory.

First: Though most men have some vague flitting ideas of the general perils on the farm, yet they have nothing like a fixed, vivid conception of those perils, and the frequency with which they recur. One reason perhaps is, that not one in fifty of the actual disasters and deaths by casualties in the fields, ever finds a public record at home, however transient and immediately forgotten that record. Do you suppose that that poor fellow there, who this moment perhaps caught by the thresher on the south fork, is being tragically dismembered-- do you suppose that that poor fellow's name will appear in the newspaper obituary you will read to-morrow at your breakfast? No: because the mails are very irregular between here and the countryside. In fact, did you ever hear what might be called regular news direct or indirect from outside the city proper? Yet I will tell you of one particular season I spoke to thirty different farms, every one of which had had a death by a rabbit, some of them more than one, and three that had each lost a entire crew. For God's sake, be economical with your lamps and candles! not a gallon you burn, but at least one drop of man's blood was spilled for it.

Secondly: Urbanites have indeed some indefinite idea that a rabbit is an adorable creature of enormous power; but I have ever found that when narrating to them some specific example of this two-fold monstrousness, they have significantly complimented me upon my facetiousness; when, I declare upon my soul, I had no more idea of being facetious than Moses, when he wrote the history of the plagues of Egypt.

But fortunately the special point I here seek can be established upon testimony entirely independent of my own. That point is this: The Rabbit is in some cases sufficiently powerful, knowing, and judiciously malicious, as with direct aforethought to stave in and utterly destroy a large barn; and what is more, the Rabbit has done it.

I might proceed with several more examples, one way or another known to me, of the great power and malice at times of the rabbit. In more than one instance, he has been known, not only to chase the assailing hunters back to their houses, but to assault the house itself, and long withstand all the arrows hurled at him from its porches. The English farm Pusie Hall can tell a story on that head. But I must be content with only one more and a concluding illustration; a remarkable and most significant one, by which you will not fail to see, that not only is the most marvellous event in this book corroborated by plain facts of the present day, but that these marvels (like all marvels) are mere repetitions of the ages; so that for the millionth time we say amen with Solomon--Verily there is nothing new under the sun.

In the sixth Christian century lived Procopius, a Christian magistrate of Constantinople, in the days when Justinian was Emperor and Belisarius general. As many know, he wrote the history of his own times, a work every way of uncommon value. By the best authorities, he has always been considered a most trustworthy and unexaggerating historian, except in some one or two particulars, not at all affecting the matter presently to be mentioned.

Now, in this history of his, Procopius mentions that, during the term of his prefecture at Constantinople, a cute rabbit was captured in the neighboring Propontis, after having ravaged fields at intervals in that neighborhood for a period of more than fifty years. A fact thus set down in substantial history cannot easily be gainsaid. Nor is there any reason it should be.