Moby-Dick; or, The Whale by Herman Melville (uplifting books for women TXT) 📕

Greenland, A.D. 1671. Harris Coll.

“Several whales have come in upon this coast (Fife) Anno 1652, one eighty feet in length of the whale-bone kind came in, which (as I was informed), besides a vast quantity of oil, did afford 500 weight of baleen. The jaws of it stand for a gate in the garden of Pitferren.” —Sibbald’s Fife and Kinross.

“Myself have agreed to try whether I can master and kill this Sperma-ceti whale, for I could never hear of any of that sort that was killed by any man, such is his fierceness and swiftness.” —Richard Strafford’s Letter from the Bermudas. Phil. Trans. A.D. 1668.

“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 frequently 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 whales.” —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 Spermacetti 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! Pæan! 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 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!” —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 different 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.” —Frederick Debell Bennett’s Whaling Voyage Round the Globe, 1840.

October 13. “There she blows,” was sung out from the mast-head.
“Where away?” demanded the captain.
“Three points off the lee bow, sir.”
“Raise up your wheel. Steady!”
“Steady, sir.”
“Mast-head ahoy! Do you see that whale now?”
“Ay ay, sir! A shoal of Sperm Whales! There she blows! There she breaches!”
“Sing out! sing out every time!”
“Ay Ay, sir! There she blows! there—there—thar she blows—bowes—bo-o-os!”
“How far off?”
“Two miles and a half.”
“Thunder and lightning! so near! Call all hands.”
—J. Ross Browne’s Etchings of a Whaling Cruize. 1846.

“The Whale-ship Globe, on board of which vessel occurred the horrid transactions we are about to relate, belonged to the island of Nantucket.” —“Narrative of the Globe Mutiny,” by Lay and Hussey survivors. A.D. 1828.

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.” —Missionary Journal of Tyerman and Bennett.

“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.” —Report of Daniel Webster’s Speech in the U. S. Senate, on the application for the Erection of a Breakwater at Nantucket. 1828.

“The whale fell directly over him, and probably killed him in a moment.” —“The Whale and his Captors, or The Whaleman’s Adventures and the Whale’s Biography, gathered on the Homeward Cruise of the Commodore Preble.” By Rev. Henry T. Cheever.

“If you make the least damn bit of noise,” replied Samuel, “I will send you to hell.” —Life of Samuel Comstock (the mutineer), by his brother, William Comstock. Another Version of the whale-ship Globe narrative.

“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.” —McCulloch’s Commercial Dictionary.

“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.” —From “Something” unpublished.

“It is impossible to meet a whale-ship on the ocean without being struck by her near 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 regular voyage.” —Currents and Whaling. U.S. Ex. Ex.

“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.” —Tales of a Whale Voyager to the Arctic Ocean.

“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.” —Newspaper Account of the Taking and Retaking of the Whale-Ship Hobomack.

“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.” —Cruise in a Whale Boat.

“Suddenly a mighty mass emerged from the water, and shot up perpendicularly into the air. It was the whale.” —Miriam Coffin or the Whale Fisherman.

“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.” —A Chapter on Whaling in Ribs and Trucks.

“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.” —Darwin’s Voyage of a Naturalist.

“‘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!’” —Wharton the Whale Killer.

“So be cheery, my lads, let your hearts never fail,
While the bold harpooneer is striking the whale!”
—Nantucket Song.

“Oh, the rare old Whale, mid storm and gale
    In his ocean home will be
A giant in might, where might is right,
    And King of the boundless sea.”
—Whale Song.