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- wantonness fuzzing up the water through their pipes and vents, which
nature has placed on their shoulders.” —_Sir T. Herbert’s Voyages
into Asia and Africa. Harris Coll_.
“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.” —_Schouten’s Sixth Circumnavigation_.
“We set sail from the Elbe, wind N.E. in the ship called The
Jonas-in-the-Whale.... Some say the whale can’t open his mouth, but
that is a fable.... They frequently climb up the masts to see whether
they can see a whale, for the first discoverer has a ducat for his
pains.... I was told of a whale taken near Shetland, that had above a
barrel of herrings in his belly.... One of our harpooneers told me
that he caught once a whale in Spitzbergen that was white all over.”
—_A Voyage to 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 Spermaceti Whale
Fishery_.
“In the free element beneath me swam, Floundered and dived, in play,
in chace, in battle, Fishes of every colour, 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,