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1Crossing the deck, let us now have a good long look at the Right Whale's head. As in general shape the noble Sperm
2Whale's head may be compared to a Roman war-chariot (especially in front, where it is so broadly rounded); so, at a
3broad view, the Right Whale's head bears a rather inelegant resemblance to a gigantic galliot-toed shoe. Two hundred
4years ago an old Dutch voyager likened its shape to that of a shoemaker's last. And in this same last or shoe, that old
5woman of the nursery tale, with the swarming brood, might very comfortably be lodged, she and all her progeny. But as
6you come nearer to this great head it begins to assume different aspects, according to your point of view. If you stand
7on its summit and look at these two F-shaped spoutholes, you would take the whole head for an enormous bass-viol, and
8these spiracles, the apertures in its sounding-board. Then, again, if you fix your eye upon this strange, crested,
9comb-like incrustation on the top of the mass--this green, barnacled thing, which the Greenlanders call the "crown," and
10the Southern fishers the "bonnet" of the Right Whale; fixing your eyes solely on this, you would take the head for the
11trunk of some huge oak, with a bird's nest in its crotch. At any rate, when you watch those live crabs that nestle here
12on this bonnet, such an idea will be almost sure to occur to you; unless, indeed, your fancy has been fixed by the
13technical term "crown" also bestowed upon it; in which case you will take great interest in thinking how this mighty
14monster is actually a diademed king of the sea, whose green crown has been put together for him in this marvellous
15manner. But if this whale be a king, he is a very sulky looking fellow to grace a diadem. Look at that hanging lower
16lip! what a huge sulk and pout is there! a sulk and pout, by carpenter's measurement, about twenty feet long and five
17feet deep; a sulk and pout that will yield you some 500 gallons of oil and more. A great pity, now, that this
18unfortunate whale should be hare-lipped. The fissure is about a foot across. Probably the mother during an important
19interval was sailing down the Peruvian coast, when earthquakes caused the beach to gape. Over this lip, as over a
20slippery threshold, we now slide into the mouth. Upon my word were I at Mackinaw, I should take this to be the inside of
21an Indian wigwam. Good Lord! is this the road that Jonah went? The roof is about twelve feet high, and runs to a pretty
22sharp angle, as if there were a regular ridge-pole there; while these ribbed, arched, hairy sides, present us with those
23wondrous, half vertical, scimetar-shaped slats of whalebone, say three hundred on a side, which depending from the upper
24part of the head or crown bone, form those Venetian blinds which have elsewhere been cursorily mentioned. The edges of
25these bones are fringed with hairy fibres, through which the Right Whale strains the water, and in whose intricacies he
26retains the small fish, when openmouthed he goes through the seas of brit in feeding time. In the central blinds of
27bone, as they stand in their natural order, there are certain curious marks, curves, hollows, and ridges, whereby some
28whalemen calculate the creature's age, as the age of an oak by its circular rings. Though the certainty of this
29criterion is far from demonstrable, yet it has the savor of analogical probability. At any rate, if we yield to it, we
30must grant a far greater age to the Right Whale than at first glance will seem reasonable. In old times, there seem to
31have prevailed the most curious fancies concerning these blinds. One voyager in Purchas calls them the wondrous
32"whiskers" inside of the whale's mouth; another, "hogs' bristles"; a third old gentleman in Hackluyt uses the following
33elegant language: "There are about two hundred and fifty fins growing on each side of his upper chop, which arch over
34his tongue on each side of his mouth." *This reminds us that the Right Whale really has a sort of whisker, or rather a
35moustache, consisting of a few scattered white hairs on the upper part of the outer end of the lower jaw. Sometimes
36these tufts impart a rather brigandish expression to his otherwise solemn countenance. As every one knows, these same
37"hogs' bristles," "fins," "whiskers," "blinds," or whatever you please, furnish to the ladies their busks and other
38stiffening contrivances. But in this particular, the demand has long been on the decline. It was in Queen Anne's time
39that the bone was in its glory, the farthingale being then all the fashion. And as those ancient dames moved about
40gaily, though in the jaws of the whale, as you may say; even so, in a shower, with the like thoughtlessness, do we
41nowadays fly under the same jaws for protection; the umbrella being a tent spread over the same bone. But now forget all
42about blinds and whiskers for a moment, and, standing in the Right Whale's mouth, look around you afresh. Seeing all
43these colonnades of bone so methodically ranged about, would you not think you were inside of the great Haarlem organ,
44and gazing upon its thousand pipes? For a carpet to the organ we have a rug of the softest Turkey--the tongue, which is
45glued, as it were, to the floor of the mouth. It is very fat and tender, and apt to tear in pieces in hoisting it on
46deck. This particular tongue now before us; at a passing glance I should say it was a six-barreler; that is, it will
47yield you about that amount of oil. Ere this, you must have plainly seen the truth of what I started with--that the
48Sperm Whale and the Right Whale have almost entirely different heads. To sum up, then: in the Right Whale's there is no
49great well of sperm; no ivory teeth at all; no long, slender mandible of a lower jaw, like the Sperm Whale's. Nor in the
50Sperm Whale are there any of those blinds of bone; no huge lower lip; and scarcely anything of a tongue. Again, the
51Right Whale has two external spout-holes, the Sperm Whale only one. Look your last, now, on these venerable hooded
52heads, while they yet lie together; for one will soon sink, unrecorded, in the sea; the other will not be very long in
53following. Can you catch the expression of the Sperm Whale's there? It is the same he died with, only some of the longer
54wrinkles in the forehead seem now faded away. I think his broad brow to be full of a prairie-like placidity, born of a
55speculative indifference as to death. But mark the other head's expression. See that amazing lower lip, pressed by
56accident against the vessel's side, so as firmly to embrace the jaw. Does not this whole head seem to speak of an
57enormous practical resolution in facing death? This Right Whale I take to have been a Stoic; the Sperm Whale, a
58Platonian, who might have taken up Spinoza in his latter years.
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