"Main God bless us! After sailing for so long and going through several storms, we've finally reached Divine Whale Port! Once we're here, there'll be whale meat enough for everyone, houses enough too, and everyone can get a proper rest..."
"Praise the Main God! Speed up! We have to make shore before dark, dock at the port, and rest well for the night!"
"Oh! The mountains are majestic, the sea lies hidden and far, islands coil all around, and the haze of late spring is blurred with rosy clouds... and whale song is rising! This truly is, truly is, a great island like the God Mountain of the Eastern Sea!..."
The crimson clouds burned red, as if stained with fresh blood. Great Whale Island loomed in and out of the Sea of Whales, its majestic white snowcapped peaks stretching for a hundred li, like the Penglai immortal mountain of the Eastern Sea from myth. And the Kingdom's two Zheyang Ships sailed along the southeastern edge of this "White Whale Island," heading toward Divine Whale Port, already visible in the distance.
Along Alaska's vast coastline of six or seven thousand li, this far-northern great island of nine thousand square kilometers was nothing more than a tiny speck in the immensity. In truth, the Alaska "long tail" in northwestern North America covered a full 1.72 million square kilometers, nearly five times the size of the Japanese archipelago! This Great Whale Island, neither especially large nor small, was indeed only "a tuft of fur" at the tip of that "long tail." Yet if it were placed upon the long, narrow Honshu Island, it would already be more than twice the size of Omi Province, enough to make the dozen or so great Wagoku Artisans from Omi aboard the ships gasp in uncontrollable amazement.