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MOBY DICK |
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EXTRACTS(Supplied By a Sub-Sub-Librarian.) [It will be seen that this mere painstaking burrower and grub-worm of a poor devil of a Sub-Sub appears to have gone through the long Vaticans and street-stalls of the earth, picking up whatever random allusions to whales he could anyways find in any book whatsoever, sacred or profane. Therefore you must not, in every case at least, take the higgledy-piggledy whale statements, however authentic, in these extracts, for veritable gospel cetology. Far from it. As touching the ancient authors generally, as well as the poets here appearing, these extracts are solely valuable or entertaining, as affording a glancing bird's eye view of what has been promiscuously said, thought, fancied, and sung of Leviathan, by many nations and generations, including our own. So fare thee well, poor devil of a Sub-Sub, whose commentator I am. Thou belongest to that hopeless, sallow tribe which no wine of this world will ever warm; and for whom even Pale Sherry would be too rosy-strong; but with whom one sometimes loves to sit, and feel poor-devilish, too; and grow convivial upon tears; and say to them bluntly, with full eyes and empty glasses, and in not altogether unpleasant sadness -- Give it up, Sub-Subs! For by how much the more pains ye take to please the world, by so much the more shall ye for ever go thankless! Would that I could clear out Hampton Court and the Tuileries for ye! But gulp down your tears and hie aloft to the royal-mast with your hearts; for your friends who have gone before are clearing out the seven-storied heavens, and making refugees of long-pampered Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael, against your coming. Here ye strike but splintered hearts together -- there, ye shall strike unsplinterable glasses!] Extracts "And God created
great whales." "Leviathan maketh
a path to shine after him; One would think the deep to be hoary." "Now the Lord had
prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah." "There go the
ships; there is that Leviathan whom thou hast made to play therein." "In that day, the
Lord with his sore, and great, and strong sword, shall punish Leviathan
the piercing serpent, even Leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall
slay the dragon that is in the sea." "And what thing
soever besides cometh within the chaos of this monster's mouth, be it
beast, boat, or stone, down it goes all incontinently that foul great
swallow of his, and perisheth in the bottomless gulf of his paunch."
"The Indian Sea
breedeth the most and the biggest fishes that are: among which the
Whales and Whirlpooles called Balænæ, take up as much in length as
four acres or arpens of land." "Scarcely had we
proceeded two days on the sea, when about sunrise a great many Whales
and other monsters of the sea, appeared. Among the former, one was of a
most monstrous size. * * This came towards us, open-mouthed, raising the
waves on all sides, and beating the sea before him into a foam." "He visited this
country also with a view of catching horse-whales, which had bones of
very great value for their teeth, of which he brought some to the king.
* * * The best whales were catched in his own country, of which some
were forty-eight, some fifty yards long. He said that he was one of
six who had killed sixty in two days." "And whereas all
the other things, whether beast or vessel, that enter into the dreadful
gulf of this monster's (whale's) mouth, are immediately lost and
swallowed up, the sea-gudgeon retires into it in great security, and
there sleeps." "Let us fly, let
us fly! Old Nick take me if it is not Leviathan described by the noble
prophet Moses in the life of patient Job." "This whale's
liver was two cart-loads." "The great
Leviathan that maketh the seas to seethe like boiling pan." "Touching that
monstrous bulk of the whale or ork we have received nothing certain.
They grow exceeding fat, insomuch that an incredible quantity of oil
will be extracted out of one whale." "The sovereignest
thing on earth is parmacetti for an inward bruise." "Very like a
whale." "Which to recure,
no skill of leach's art "Immense as
whales, the motion of whose vast bodies can in a peaceful calm trouble
the ocean till it boil." "What spermacetti
is, men might justly doubt, since the learned Hofmannus in his work of
thirty years, saith plainly, Nescio quid sit." "Like Spencer's
Talus with his iron flail "By art is
created that great Leviathan, called a Commonwealth or State -- (in
Latin, Civitas) which is but an artificial man." "Silly Mansoul
swallowed it without chewing, as if it had been a sprat in the mouth of
a whale." "That sea beast __ "There
Leviathan, "The mighty whales
which swim in a sea of water, and have a sea of oil swimming in them."
"So close behind
some promontory lie "While the whale
is floating, at the stern of the ship, they cut off his head, and tow it
with a boat as near the shore as it will come; but it will be aground in
twelve or thirteen foot water." "In their way they
saw many whales sporting in the ocean, and in wantonness fuzzing up the
water through their pipes and vents, which nature has placed on their
shoulders." "Here they saw
such huge troops of whales, that they were forced to proceed with a
great deal of caution for fear they should run their ship upon them."
"We set sail from
the Elbe, wind N. E. in the ship called The Jonas-in-the-Whale. "Several whales have come in upon this coast (Fife). Anno 1652, one eighty foot in length of the whale-bone kind came in, which, (as I was informed) beside a vast quantity of oil, did afford 500 weight of baleen. The jaws of it stand for a gate in the garden of Pitfirren. " ----Sibbald's Fife and Kinross. "Myself have
agreed to try whether I can master and kill this Spermaceti whale, for I
could never hear of any of that sort that was killed by any man, such as
his fierceness and swiftness." "Whales in the sea "We saw also
abundance of large whales, there being more in these southern seas, as I
may say, by a hundred to one; than we have to the northward of us." * * * * * "and the
breath of the whale is frequently attended with such an insupportable
smell, as to bring on a disorder of the brain." "To fifty chosen
sylphs of special note, "If we compare
land animals in respect to magnitude, with those that take up their
abode in the deep, we shall find they will appear contemptible in the
comparison. The whale is doubtless the largest animal in creation." "If you should
write a fable for little fishes, you would make them speak like great
whales." In the afternoon
we saw what was supposed to be a rock, but it was found to be a dead
whale, which some Asiatics had killed, and were then towing ashore. They
seemed to endeavor to conceal themselves behind the whale, in order to
avoid being seen by us." "The larger
whales, they seldom venture to attack. They stand in so great dread of
some of them, that when out at sea they are afraid to mention even their
names, and carry dung, brimstone, juniper-wood, and some other articles
of the same nature in their boats, in order to terrify and prevent their
too near approach." "The Spermacetti
Whale found by the Nantuckois, is an active, fierce animal, and requires
vast address and boldness in the fishermen." "And pray, sir,
what in the world is equal to it?" "Spain -- a great
whale stranded on the shores of Europe." "A tenth branch of
the king's ordinary revenue, said to be grounded on the consideration of
his guarding and protecting the seas from pirates and robbers, is the
right to royal fish, which are whale and sturgeon. And these, when
either thrown ashore or caught near the coasts, are the property of the
king." "Soon to the sport
of death the crews repair: "Bright shone the
roofs, the domes, the spires, "So fire with
water to compare, "Ten or fifteen
gallons of blood are thrown out of the heart at a stroke, with immense
velocity." "The aorta of a
whale is larger in the bore than the main pipe of the water-works at
London Bridge, and the water roaring in its passage through that pipe is
inferior in impetus and velocity to the blood gushing from the whale's
heart." "The whale is a
mammiferous animal without hind feet." "In 40 degrees
south, we saw Spermacetti Whales, but did not take any till the first of
May, the sea being then covered with them." "In the free
element beneath me swam, "Io! Pæan! Io!
sing, "In the year 1690
some persons were on a high hill observing the whales spouting and
sparring with each other, when one observed; there -- pointing to the
sea -- is a green pasture where our children's grand-children will go
for bread." "I built a cottage
for Susan and myself and made a gateway in the form of a Gothic Arch, by
setting up a whale's jaw bones." "She came to
bespeak a monument for her first love, who had been killed by a whale in
the Pacific ocean, no less than forty years ago." "No, Sir, 'tis a
Right Whale," answered Tom; "I saw his spout; he threw up a pair of as
pretty rainbows as a Christian would wish to look at. He's a raal
oil-butt, that fellow!" "The papers were
brought in, and we saw in the Berlin Gazette that whales had been
introduced on the stage there." "My God! Mr.
Chase, what is the matter?" I answered, "we have been stove by a whale." "A mariner sat on
the shrouds one night, "The quantity of
line withdrawn from the different boats engaged in the capture of this
one whale, amounted altogether to 10,440 yards or nearly six English
miles.'" "Mad with the
agonies he endures from these fresh attacks, the infuriated Sperm Whale
rolls over and over; he rears his enormous head, and with wide expanded
jaw snaps at everything around him; he rushes at the boats with his
head; they are propelled before him with vast swiftness, and sometimes
utterly destroyed. "The Cachalot"
(Sperm Whale) "is not only better armed than the True Whale" (Greenland
or Right Whale) "in possessing a formidable weapon at either extremity
of its body, but also more frequently displays a disposition to employ
those weapons offensively, and in a manner at once so artful, bold, and
mischievous, as to lead to its being regarded as the most dangerous to
attack of all the known species of the whale tribe." October 13. "There
she blows," was sung out from the masthead. "The Whale-ship
Globe, on board of which vessel occurred the horrid transactions we are
about to relate, belonged to the island of Nantucket." "Being once
pursued by a whale which he had wounded, he parried the assault for some
time with a lance; but the furious monster at length rushed on the boat;
himself and comrades only being preserved by leaping into the water when
they saw the onset was inevitable." "Nantucket
itself," said Mr. Webster, "is a very striking and peculiar portion of
the National interest. There is a population of eight or nine thousand
persons, living here in the sea, adding largely every year to the
National wealth by the boldest and most persevering industry." "The whale fell
directly over him, and probably killed him in a moment." "If you make the
least damn bit of noise," replied Samuel, "I will send you to hell." "The voyages of
the Dutch and English to the Northern Ocean, in order, if possible, to
discover a passage through it to India, though they failed of their main
object, laid open the haunts of the whale. "These things are
reciprocal; the ball rebounds, only to bound forward again; for now in
laying open the haunts of the whale, the whalemen seem to have
indirectly hit upon new clews to that same mystic North-West Passage." | "It is impossible
to meet a whale-ship on the ocean without being struck by her mere
appearance. The vessel under short sail, with look- outs at the
mast-heads, eagerly scanning the wide expanse around them, has a totally
different air from those engaged in a regular voyage." "Pedestrians in
the vicinity of London and elsewhere may recollect having seen large
curved bones set upright in the earth, either to form arches over
gateways, or entrances to alcoves, and they may perhaps have been told
that these were the ribs of whales." "It was not till
the boats returned from the pursuit of these whales, that the whites saw
their ship in bloody possession of the savages enrolled among the crew."
"It is generally
well known that out of the crews of Whaling vessels (American) few ever
return in the ships on board of which they departed." "Suddenly a mighty
mass emerged from the water, and shot up perpendicularly into the air.
It was the whale." "The Whale is
harpooned to be sure; but bethink you, how you would manage a powerful
unbroken colt, with the mere appliance of a rope tied to the root of his
tail." "On one occasion I
saw two of these monsters (whales) probably male and female, slowly
swimming, one after the other, within less than a stone's throw of the
shore" (Terra Del Fuego), "over which the beech tree extended its
branches." "'Stern all!'
exclaimed the mate, as upon turning his head, he saw the distended jaws
of a large Sperm Whale close to the head of the boat, threatening it
with instant destruction; -- 'Stern all, for your lives!'" "So be cheery, my
lads, let your hearts never fail, "Oh, the rare old
Whale, mid storm and gale
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