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.. < chapter lvi 6  OF THE LESS ERRONEOUS PICTURES OF WHALES, AND THE TRUE >



     PICTURES OF WHALING SCENES In connexion with the monstrous pictures of
whales, I am strongly tempted here to enter upon those still more monstrous
stories of them which are to be found in certain books, both ancient and
modern, especially in Pliny, Purchas, Hackluyt, Harris, Cuvier, etc.  But I
pass that matter by.  i know of only four published outlines of the great Sperm

     Whale; Colnett's, Huggins's, Frederick Cuvier's, and Beale's.  In the
previous chapter Colnett and Cuvier have been referred to.  Huggins's is far
better than theirs; but, by great odds, Beale's is the best.  All Beale's
drawings of this whale are good, excepting the middle figure in the picture of
three whales in various attitudes, capping his second chapter.  His
frontispiece, boats attacking Sperm Whales, though no doubt calculated to
excite the civil scepticism of some parlor men, is admirably correct and
life-like in its general effect.  Some of the Sperm Whale drawings in J. Ross
Browne are pretty correct in contour; but they are wretchedly engraved.  That
is not his fault though.  Of the Right Whale, the best outline pictures are in
Scoresby; but they are drawn on too small a scale to convey a desirable
impression.  He has but one picture of whaling scenes, and this is a sad
deficiency, because it is by such pictures only, when at all well done,
that you can derive anything like a truthful idea of the living whale as seen
by his living hunters.  But, taken for all in all, by far the finest, though
in some details not the most correct, presentations of whales and whaling
.. <p 267 >
scenes to be anywhere found, are two large French engravings, well executed,
and taken from paintings by one Garnery.  Respectively, they represent
attacks on the Sperm and Right Whale.  In the first engraving a noble Sperm
Whale is depicted in full majesty of might, just risen beneath the boat from
the profundities of the ocean, and bearing high in the air upon his back the
terrific wreck of the stoven planks.  The prow of the boat is partially
unbroken, and is drawn just balancing upon the monster's spine; and standing
in that prow, for that one single incomputable flash of time, you behold an
oarsman, half shrouded by the incensed boiling spout of the whale, and in
the act of leaping, as if from a precipice.  The action of the whole thing is
wonderfully good and true.  The half-emptied line-tub floats on the whitened
sea; the wooden poles of the spilled harpoons obliquely bob in it; the heads
of the swimming crew are scattered about the whale in contrasting expressions
of affright; while in the black stormy distance the ship is bearing down upon
the scene.  Serious fault might be found with the anatomical details of this
whale, but let that pass; since, for the life of me, I could not draw so
good a one.  In the second engraving, the boat is in the act of drawing
alongside the barnacled flank of a large running Right Whale, that rolls his
black weedy bulk in the sea like some mossy rock-slide from the Patagonian
cliffs.  His jets are erect, full, and black like soot; so that from so
abounding a smoke in the chimney, you would think there must be a brave
supper cooking in the great bowels below.  Sea fowls are pecking at the small
crabs, shell-fish, and other sea candies and maccaroni, which the Right Whale
sometimes carries on his pestilent back.  And all the while the thick-lipped
leviathan is rushing through the deep, leaving tons of tumultuous white curds
in his wake, and causing the slight boat to rock in the swells like a skiff
caught nigh the paddle-wheels of an ocean steamer.  Thus, the foreground is
all raging commotion; but 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 capture lazily hanging from the whale-pole inserted into his
spout-hole.
.. <p 268 >
Who Garnery the painter is, or was, I know not.  But my life for it he was
either practically conversant with his subject, or else marvellously tutored
by some experienced whaleman.  The French are the lads for painting action.
Go and gaze upon all the paintings in Europe, and where will you find such a
gallery of living and breathing commotion on canvas, as in that triumphal
hall at Versailles; where the beholder fights his way, pell-mell, through the
consecutive great battles of France; where every sword seems a flash of the
Northern Lights, and the successive armed kings and Emperors dash by, like a
charge of crowned centaurs?  Not wholly unworthy of a place in that gallery,
are these sea battle-pieces of Garnery.  The natural aptitude of the French for
seizing the picturesqueness of things seems to be peculiarly evinced in what
paintings and engravings they have of their whaling scenes.  With not one
tenth of England's experience in the fishery, and not the thousandth part of
that of the Americans, they have nevertheless furnished both nations with the
only finished sketches at all capable of conveying the real spirit of the
whale hunt.  For the most part, the English and American whale draughtsmen
seem entirely content with presenting the mechanical outline of things, such
as 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.  Even Scoresby, the justly renowned Right whaleman, after giving us
a stiff full length of the Greenland whale, and three or four delicate
miniatures of narwhales and porpoises, treats us to a series of classical
engravings of boat hooks, chopping knives, and grapnels; and with the
microscopic diligence of a Leuwenhoeck submits to the inspection of a
shivering world ninety-six fac-similes of magnified Arctic snow crystals.  I
mean no disparagement to the excellent voyager (I honor him for a veteran),
but in so important a matter it was certainly an oversight not to have
procured for every crystal a sworn affidavit taken before a Greenland Justice
of the Peace.  In addition to those fine engravings from Garnery, there are
two other French engravings worthy of note, by some one who subscribes
himself h.  durand.  one of them, though not precisely
.. <p 269 >
adapted to our present purpose, nevertheless deserves mention on other
accounts.  It is a quiet noon-scene among the 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 long leaves of the palms in the
background, both drooping together in the breezeless air.  The effect is very
fine, when considered with reference to its presenting the hardy fishermen
under one of their few aspects of oriental repose.  The other engraving is
quite a different affair: the ship hove-to upon the open sea, and in the
very heart of the Leviathanic life, with a Right Whale alongside; the vessel
 (in the act of cutting-in) hove over to the monster as if to a quay; and a
boat, hurriedly pushing off from this scene of activity, is about giving
chase to whales in the distance.  The harpoons and lances lie levelled for
use; three oarsmen are just setting the mast in its hole; while from a
sudden roll of the sea, the little craft stands half-erect out of the water,
like a rearing horse.  From the ship, the smoke of the torments of the boiling
whale is going up like the smoke over a village of smithies; and to
windward, a black cloud, rising up with earnest of squalls and rains, seems
to quicken the activity of the excited seamen.
.. <p 269 >