Array MyBooks Classics - Moby Dick

“Whales in the sea

God’s voice obey.”

—N. E. PRIMER.

“We saw also abundance of large whales, there being more in those

southern seas, as I may say, by a hundred to one; than we have to the northward of us.”

—CAPTAIN COWLEY’S VOYAGE ROUND THE GLOBE, A.D. 1729.

“… and the breath of the whale is frequendy attended with

such an insupportable smell, as to bring on a disorder of the brain.”

—ULLOA’S SOUTH AMERICA.

“To fifty chosen sylphs of special note,

We trust the important charge, the petticoat.

Oft have we known that seven-fold fence to fail,

Tho’ stuffed with hoops and armed with ribs of whale.”

—RAPE OF THE LOCK.

“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.”

—GOLDSMITH, NAT. HIST.

“If you should write a fable for little fishes, you would make

them speak like great wales.”

—GOLDSMITH TO JOHNSON.

“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.”

—COOK’S VOYAGES.

“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, lime-stone, juniper-wood, and some other articles of the same nature in their boats, in order to terrify and prevent their too near approach.”

—UNO VON TROIL’S LETTERS ON BANKS’S AND SOLANDER’S

VOYAGE TO ICELAND IN 1772.

“The Spermacetti Whale found by the Nantuckois, is an active, fierce

animal, and requires vast address and boldness in the fishermen.”

—THOMAS JEFFERSON’S WHALE MEMORIAL TO THE FRENCH MINISTER IN 1778.

“And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it?”

—EDMUND BURKE’S REFERENCE IN PARLIAMENT TO THE NANTUCKET WHALE-FISHERY.

“Spain—a great whale stranded on the shores of Europe.”

—EDMUND BURKE. (SOMEWHERE.)

“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 coast, are the property of the king.”

—BLACKSTONE.

“Soon to the sport of death the crews repair:

Rodmond unerring o’er his head suspends

The barbed steel, and every turn attends.”

—FALCONER’S SHIPWRECK.

“Bright shone the roofs, the domes, the spires,

And rockets blew self driven,

To hang their momentary fire

Around the vault of heaven.

“So fire with water to compare,

The ocean serves on high,

Up-spouted by a whale in air,

To express unwieldy joy.”

—COWPER, ON THE QUEEN’S VISIT TO LONDON.

“Ten or fifteen gallons of blood are thrown out of the heart at a

stroke, with immense velocity.”

—JOHN HUNTER’S ACCOUNT OF THE DISSECTION OF A WHALE. (A SMALL SIZED ONE.)

“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.”

—PALEY’S THEOLOGY.

“The whale is a mammiferous animal without hind feet.”

—BARON CUVIER.

“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.”

—COLNETT’S VOYAGE FOR THE PURPOSE OF EXTENDING THE SPERMACETI

WHALE FISHERY.

“In the free element beneath me swam,

Floundered and dived, in play, in chace, in battle,

Fishes of every color, form, and kind;

Which language cannot paint, and mariner

Had never seen; from dread Leviathan

To insect millions peopling every wave:

Gather’d in shoals immense, like floating islands,

Led by mysterious instincts through that waste

And trackless region, though on every side

Assaulted by voracious enemies,

Whales, sharks, and monsters, arm’d in front or jaw,

With swords, saws, spiral horns, or hooked fangs.”

—MONTGOMERY’S WORLD BEFORE THE FLOOD.

“Io! Paean! Io! sing.

To the finny people’s king.

Not a mightier whale than this

In the vast Atlantic is;

Not a fatter fish than he,

Flounders round the Polar Sea.”

—CHARLES LAMB’S TRIUMPH OF THE WHALE.

“In the year 1690 some persons were on a high hill observing the

whales spouting and sporting 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.”

—OBED MACY’S HISTORY OF NANTUCKET.

“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.”

—HAWTHORNE’S TWICE TOLD TALES.

“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.”

—IBID.

“No, Sir, ’tis a Right Whale,” answered Tom; “I saw his sprout; 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!”

—COOPER’S PILOT.

“The papers were brought in, and we saw in the Berlin Gazette that

whales had been introduced on the stage there.”

—ECKERMANN’S CONVERSATIONS WITH GOETHE.

“My God! Mr. Chace, what is the matter?” I answered, “we have been

stove by a whale.”

—“NARRATIVE OF THE SHIPWRECK OF THE WHALE SHIP ESSEX OF

NANTUCKET, WHICH WAS ATTACKED AND FINALLY DESTROYED BY

A LARGE SPERM WHALE IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN.” BY OWEN

CHACE OF NANTUCKET, FIRST MATE OF SAID VESSEL. NEW

YORK, 1821.

“A mariner sat in the shrouds one night,

The wind was piping free;

Now bright, now dimmed, was the moonlight pale,

And the phospher gleamed in the wake of the whale,

As it floundered in the sea.”

—ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH.

“The quantity of line withdrawn from the boats engaged in the capture of this one whale, amounted altogether to 10,440 yards or nearly six English miles… .

“Sometimes the whale shakes its tremendous tail in the air, which,

cracking like a whip, resounds to the distance of three or four miles.”

—SCORESBY.

“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 jaws 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.

… It is a matter of great astonishment that the consideration of

the habits of so interesting, and, in a commercial point of view, so important an animal (as the Sperm Whale) should have been so entirely neglected, or should have excited so little curiosity among the numerous, and many of them competent observers, that of late years, must have possessed the most abundant and the most convenient opportunities of witnessing their habitudes.”

—THOMAS BEALE’S HISTORY OF THE SPERM WHALE, 1839.

“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 these weapons offensively and in 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.”