Seen from the mast-heads, particularly once they paused and had been stationary for a while, their vast black varieties appeared extra like lifeless lots of rock than anything. In bony, ribby areas of the earth, where at the bottom of excessive broken cliffs lots of rock lie strewn in incredible groupings upon the plain, you’ll typically discover photographs as of the petrified forms of the Leviathan partly merged in grass, which of a windy day breaks against them in a surf of green surges. At some previous gable-roofed country houses you will note brass whales hung by the tail for knockers to the road-side door. With the same marvellous persistence, and with the identical single shark’s tooth, of his one poor jack-knife, he will carve you a bit of bone sculpture, not fairly as workmanlike, however as close packed in its maziness of design, because the Greek savage, Achilles’s shield; and full of barbaric spirit and suggestiveness, as the prints of that high quality previous Dutch savage, Albert Durer.
One report described these pictures as displaying the subjects “flashing” – however I am very reliably informed that they actually showed Eric and these lads “doing a moony”, which in Scotland is usually thought to be regular boyish larking about with no sexual content material. For essentially the most half, the English and American whale draughtsmen appear solely content material with presenting the mechanical outline of issues, such because the vacant profile of the whale; which, so far as picturesqueness of effect is concerned, is about tantamount to sketching the profile of a pyramid. On the second day, numbers of Right Whales have been seen, who, safe from the attack of a Sperm Whaler like the Pequod, with open jaws sluggishly swam by way of the brit, which, adhering to the fringing fibres of that wondrous Venetian blind of their mouths, was in that manner separated from the water that escaped on the lip. That is apparent to the observers of natural things, and mainly of animals, through which, as a result of they’re to maneuver with many motions, Nature hath made many flexures, and hath thereunto commodiously knitted the elements for movement, as to the knees, to the hips, for the inabling of dwelling creatures to go, and run at their pleasure.
The pure aptitude of the French for seizing the picturesqueness of issues seems to be peculiarly evinced in what paintings and engravings they have of their whaling scenes. It is a quiet noon-scene among the many isles of the Pacific; a French whaler anchored, inshore, in a calm, and lazily taking water on board; the loosened sails of the ship, and the lengthy leaves of the palms in the background, both drooping collectively in the breezeless air. The chrysalis is brown, inclining to yellowish between the rings, and the again is furry; enclosed in a cocoon spun up among leaves or in any suitable cranny. The harpoons and lances lie levelled to be used; three oarsmen are simply setting the mast in its hole; whereas from a sudden roll of the sea, the little craft stands half-erect out of the water, like a rearing horse. And all of the whereas the thick-lipped leviathan is rushing by the deep, leaving tons of tumultuous white curds in his wake, and inflicting the slight boat to rock within the swells like a skiff caught nigh the paddle-wheels of an ocean steamer.
From the ship, the smoke of the torments of the boiling whale is going up just like the smoke over a village of smithies; and to windward, a black cloud, rising up with earnest of squalls and rains, appears to quicken the activity of the excited seamen. Thus, the foreground is all raging commotion; however behind, in admirable artistic contrast, is the glassy level of a sea becalmed, the drooping unstarched sails of the powerless ship, and the inert mass of a dead whale, a conquered fortress, with the flag of seize lazily hanging from the whale-pole inserted into his spout-gap. Wooden whales, or whales cut in profile out of the small darkish slabs of the noble South Sea warfare-wooden, are regularly met with within the forecastles of American whalers. Judge Caton, however, informs me that within the males of the wapiti deer (Cervus canadensis) the neck, belly, and legs are a lot darker than within the female; however during the winter the darker tints progressively fade away and disappear.
