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- 17818
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- 2026-01-23T15:41:06.400Z
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- 17760
- text
- through Behring’s straits, and into the remotest secret drawers and
lockers of the world; and the thousand harpoons and lances darted along
all continental coasts; the moot point is, whether Leviathan can long
endure so wide a chase, and so remorseless a havoc; whether he must not
at last be exterminated from the waters, and the last whale, like the
last man, smoke his last pipe, and then himself evaporate in the final
puff.
Comparing the humped herds of whales with the humped herds of buffalo,
which, not forty years ago, overspread by tens of thousands the
prairies of Illinois and Missouri, and shook their iron manes and
scowled with their thunder-clotted brows upon the sites of populous
river-capitals, where now the polite broker sells you land at a dollar
an inch; in such a comparison an irresistible argument would seem
furnished, to show that the hunted whale cannot now escape speedy
extinction.
But you must look at this matter in every light. Though so short a
period ago—not a good lifetime—the census of the buffalo in Illinois
exceeded the census of men now in London, and though at the present day
not one horn or hoof of them remains in all that region; and though the
cause of this wondrous extermination was the spear of man; yet the far
different nature of the whale-hunt peremptorily forbids so inglorious
an end to the Leviathan. Forty men in one ship hunting the Sperm Whales
for forty-eight months think they have done extremely well, and thank
God, if at last they carry home the oil of forty fish. Whereas, in the
days of the old Canadian and Indian hunters and trappers of the West,
when the far west (in whose sunset suns still rise) was a wilderness
and a virgin, the same number of moccasined men, for the same number of
months, mounted on horse instead of sailing in ships, would have slain
not forty, but forty thousand and more buffaloes; a fact that, if need
were, could be statistically stated.
Nor, considered aright, does it seem any argument in favour of the
gradual extinction of the Sperm Whale, for example, that in former
years (the latter part of the last century, say) these Leviathans, in
small pods, were encountered much oftener than at present, and, in
consequence, the voyages were not so prolonged, and were also much more
remunerative. Because, as has been elsewhere noticed, those whales,
influenced by some views to safety, now swim the seas in immense
caravans, so that to a large degree the scattered solitaries, yokes,
and pods, and schools of other days are now aggregated into vast but
widely separated, unfrequent armies. That is all. And equally
fallacious seems the conceit, that because the so-called whale-bone
whales no longer haunt many grounds in former years abounding with
them, hence that species also is declining. For they are only being
driven from promontory to cape; and if one coast is no longer enlivened
with their jets, then, be sure, some other and remoter strand has been
very recently startled by the unfamiliar spectacle.
Furthermore: concerning these last mentioned Leviathans, they have two
firm fortresses, which, in all human probability, will for ever remain
impregnable. And as upon the invasion of their valleys, the frosty
Swiss have retreated to their mountains; so, hunted from the savannas
and glades of the middle seas, the whale-bone whales can at last resort
to their Polar citadels, and diving under the ultimate glassy barriers
and walls there, come up among icy fields and floes; and in a charmed
circle of everlasting December, bid defiance to all pursuit from man.
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