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1Stone; in Mountains; in Stars. On Tower-hill, as you go down to the London docks, you may have seen a crippled beggar
2(or kedger, as the sailors say) holding a painted board before him, representing the tragic scene in which he lost his
3leg. There are three whales and three boats; and one of the boats (presumed to contain the missing leg in all its
4original integrity) is being crunched by the jaws of the foremost whale. Any time these ten years, they tell me, has
5that man held up that picture, and exhibited that stump to an incredulous world. But the time of his justification has
6now come. His three whales are as good whales as were ever published in Wapping, at any rate; and his stump as
7unquestionable a stump as any you will find in the western clearings. But, though for ever mounted on that stump, never
8a stump-speech does the poor whaleman make; but, with downcast eyes, stands ruefully contemplating his own amputation.
9Throughout the Pacific, and also in Nantucket, and New Bedford, and Sag Harbor, you will come across lively sketches of
10whales and whaling-scenes, graven by the fishermen themselves on Sperm Whale-teeth, or ladies' busks wrought out of the
11Right Whale-bone, and other like skrimshander articles, as the whalemen call the numerous little ingenious contrivances
12they elaborately carve out of the rough material, in their hours of ocean leisure. Some of them have little boxes of
13dentistical-looking implements, specially intended for the skrimshandering business. But, in general, they toil with
14their jack-knives alone; and, with that almost omnipotent tool of the sailor, they will turn you out anything you
15please, in the way of a mariner's fancy. Long exile from Christendom and civilization inevitably restores a man to that
16condition in which God placed him, i.e. what is called savagery. Your true whale-hunter is as much a savage as an
17Iroquois. I myself am a savage, owning no allegiance but to the King of the Cannibals; and ready at any moment to rebel
18against him. Now, one of the peculiar characteristics of the savage in his domestic hours, is his wonderful patience of
19industry. An ancient Hawaiian war-club or spear-paddle, in its full multiplicity and elaboration of carving, is as great
20a trophy of human perseverance as a Latin lexicon. For, with but a bit of broken sea-shell or a shark's tooth, that
21miraculous intricacy of wooden net-work has been achieved; and it has cost steady years of steady application. As with
22the Hawaiian savage, so with the white sailor-savage. With the same marvellous patience, and with the same single
23shark's tooth, of his one poor jack-knife, he will carve you a bit of bone sculpture, not quite as workmanlike, but as
24close packed in its maziness of design, as the Greek savage, Achilles's shield; and full of barbaric spirit and
25suggestiveness, as the prints of that fine old Dutch savage, Albert Durer. Wooden whales, or whales cut in profile out
26of the small dark slabs of the noble South Sea war-wood, are frequently met with in the forecastles of American whalers.
27Some of them are done with much accuracy. At some old gable-roofed country houses you will see brass whales hung by the
28tail for knockers to the road-side door. When the porter is sleepy, the anvil-headed whale would be best. But these
29knocking whales are seldom remarkable as faithful essays. On the spires of some old-fashioned churches you will see
30sheet-iron whales placed there for weather-cocks; but they are so elevated, and besides that are to all intents and
31purposes so labelled with "Hands off!" you cannot examine them closely enough to decide upon their merit. In bony, ribby
32regions of the earth, where at the base of high broken cliffs masses of rock lie strewn in fantastic groupings upon the
33plain, you will often discover images as of the petrified forms of the Leviathan partly merged in grass, which of a
34windy day breaks against them in a surf of green surges. Then, again, in mountainous countries where the traveller is
35continually girdled by amphitheatrical heights; here and there from some lucky point of view you will catch passing
36glimpses of the profiles of whales defined along the undulating ridges. But you must be a thorough whaleman, to see
37these sights; and not only that, but if you wish to return to such a sight again, you must be sure and take the exact
38intersecting latitude and longitude of your first stand-point, else so chance-like are such observations of the hills,
39that your precise, previous stand-point would require a laborious re-discovery; like the Soloma Islands, which still
40remain incognita, though once high-ruffed Mendanna trod them and old Figuera chronicled them. Nor when expandingly
41lifted by your subject, can you fail to trace out great whales in the starry heavens, and boats in pursuit of them; as
42when long filled with thoughts of war the Eastern nations saw armies locked in battle among the clouds. Thus at the
43North have I chased Leviathan round and round the Pole with the revolutions of the bright points that first defined him
44to me. And beneath the effulgent Antarctic skies I have boarded the Argo-Navis, and joined the chase against the starry
45Cetus far beyond the utmost stretch of Hydrus and the Flying Fish. With a frigate's anchors for my bridle-bitts and
46fasces of harpoons for spurs, would I could mount that whale and leap the topmost skies, to see whether the fabled
47heavens with all their countless tents really lie encamped beyond my mortal sight!
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