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1Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no money in my purse, and nothing
2particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a
3way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the
4mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin
5warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of
6me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically
7knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for
8pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is
9nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly
10the same feelings towards the ocean with me. There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves
11as Indian isles by coral reefs--commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its
12extreme downtown is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few hours
13previous were out of sight of land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there. Circumambulate the city of a dreamy
14Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you
15see?--Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean
16reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from
17China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of
18week days pent up in lath and plaster--tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are the
19green fields gone? What do they here? But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly
20bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee
21of yonder warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in.
22And there they stand--miles of them--leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets and
23avenues--north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the
24compasses of all those ships attract them thither? Once more. Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes.
25Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the
26stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries--stand that man on
27his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should
28you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a
29metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever. But here is an artist. He
30desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of
31the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a
32crucifix were within; and here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy
33smoke. Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their
34hill-side blue. But though the picture lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves
35upon this shepherd's head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd's eye were fixed upon the magic stream before him. Go
36visit the Prairies in June, when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among Tiger-lilies--what is the one
37charm wanting?--Water--there is not a drop of water there! Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel your
38thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate
39whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is
40almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon
41your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your
42ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate
43deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of
44Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was
45drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of
46life; and this is the key to it all. Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin to grow
47hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of my lungs, I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea
48as a passenger. For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a purse is but a rag unless you have something
49in it. Besides, passengers get sea-sick--grow quarrelsome--don't sleep of nights--do not enjoy themselves much, as a
50general thing;--no, I never go as a passenger; nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a Commodore,
51or a Captain, or a Cook. I abandon the glory and distinction of such offices to those who like them. For my part, I
52abominate all honorable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind whatsoever. It is quite as much as I
53can do to take care of myself, without taking care of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and what not. And as for going
54as cook,--though I confess there is considerable glory in that, a cook being a sort of officer on ship-board--yet,
55somehow, I never fancied broiling fowls;--though once broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and
56peppered, there is no one who will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will. It
57is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that you see the
58mummies of those creatures in their huge bake-houses the pyramids. No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right
59before the mast, plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head. True, they rather order me about
60some, and make me jump from spar to spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of thing is
61unpleasant enough. It touches one's sense of honor, particularly if you come of an old established family in the land,
62the Van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all, if just previous to putting your hand into the
63tar-pot, you have been lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand in awe of you. The transition
64is a keen one, I assure you, from a schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics
65to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears off in time.
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