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“Not far from the Sea-side, they have a Temple, the Rafters and Beams
of which are made of Whale-Bones; for Whales of a monstrous size are
oftentimes cast up dead upon that shore. The Common People imagine,
that by a secret Power bestowed by God upon the Temple, no Whale can
pass it without immediate death. But the truth of the Matter is, that
on either side of the Temple, there are Rocks that shoot two Miles into
the Sea, and wound the Whales when they light upon ’em. They keep a
Whale’s Rib of an incredible length for a Miracle, which lying upon the
Ground with its convex part uppermost, makes an Arch, the Head of which
cannot be reached by a Man upon a Camel’s Back. This Rib (says John
Leo) is said to have layn there a hundred Years before I saw it. Their
Historians affirm, that a Prophet who prophesy’d of Mahomet, came from
this Temple, and some do not stand to assert, that the Prophet Jonas
was cast forth by the Whale at the Base of the Temple.”
In this Afric Temple of the Whale I leave you, reader, and if you be a
Nantucketer, and a whaleman, you will silently worship there.
CHAPTER 105. Does the Whale’s Magnitude Diminish?—Will He Perish?
Inasmuch, then, as this Leviathan comes floundering down upon us from
the head-waters of the Eternities, it may be fitly inquired, whether,
in the long course of his generations, he has not degenerated from the
original bulk of his sires.
But upon investigation we find, that not only are the whales of the
present day superior in magnitude to those whose fossil remains are
found in the Tertiary system (embracing a distinct geological period
prior to man), but of the whales found in that Tertiary system, those
belonging to its latter formations exceed in size those of its earlier
ones.
Of all the pre-adamite whales yet exhumed, by far the largest is the
Alabama one mentioned in the last chapter, and that was less than
seventy feet in length in the skeleton. Whereas, we have already seen,
that the tape-measure gives seventy-two feet for the skeleton of a
large sized modern whale. And I have heard, on whalemen’s authority,
that Sperm Whales have been captured near a hundred feet long at the
time of capture.
But may it not be, that while the whales of the present hour are an
advance in magnitude upon those of all previous geological periods; may
it not be, that since Adam’s time they have degenerated?
Assuredly, we must conclude so, if we are to credit the accounts of
such gentlemen as Pliny, and the ancient naturalists generally. For
Pliny tells us of whales that embraced acres of living bulk, and
Aldrovandus of others which measured eight hundred feet in length—Rope
Walks and Thames Tunnels of Whales! And even in the days of Banks and
Solander, Cooke’s naturalists, we find a Danish member of the Academy
of Sciences setting down certain Iceland Whales (reydan-siskur, or
Wrinkled Bellies) at one hundred and twenty yards; that is, three
hundred and sixty feet. And Lacépède, the French naturalist, in his
elaborate history of whales, in the very beginning of his work (page
3), sets down the Right Whale at one hundred metres, three hundred and
twenty-eight feet. And this work was published so late as A.D. 1825.
But will any whaleman believe these stories? No. The whale of to-day is
as big as his ancestors in Pliny’s time. And if ever I go where Pliny
is, I, a whaleman (more than he was), will make bold to tell him so.
Because I cannot understand how it is, that while the Egyptian mummies
that were buried thousands of years before even Pliny was born, do not
measure so much in their coffins as a modern Kentuckian in his socks;
and while the cattle and other animals sculptured on the oldest
Egyptian and Nineveh tablets, by the relative proportions in which they
are drawn, just as plainly prove that the high-bred, stall-fed, prize
cattle of Smithfield, not only equal, but far exceed in magnitude the
fattest of Pharaoh’s fat kine; in the face of all this, I will not
admit that of all animals the whale alone should have degenerated.
But still another inquiry remains; one often agitated by the more
recondite Nantucketers. Whether owing to the almost omniscient
look-outs at the mast-heads of the whale-ships, now penetrating even
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.