Moby Dick - The Great Flood Gates of the Wonder World

So I'm reading along in Moby Dick - never read it before - and am severely tempted to skip this particular chapter comprised of a unscientific and pompous classification of whales. Glad I didn't because I ran into this little tid bit while Ishmael is describing the Narwhale:

"Black Letter tells me that Sir Martin Frobisher on his return from that voyage, when Queen Bess did gallantly wave her jeweled hand to him from a window of Greenwich Palace, as his bold ship sailed down the Thames; ‘when Sir Martin returned from that voyage’, saith Black Letter, ‘on bended knees he presented to her highness a prodigious long horn of the Narwhale, which for a long period after hung in the castle at Windsor’. An Irish author avers that the Earl of Leicester, on bended knees, did likewise present to her highness another horn, pertaining to a land beast of the unicorn nature."

I'm very much enjoying Moby Dick. I don't know why it's always a surprise to me that old books that are still in print are so good, because the reason that I read those books is because they must be good if they're still in print.