Amiga ISO Collection/AmigaDemoCD2.iso/ASCII/TEXTE/BOOKS/Novels/H.Melville/moby.92

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.. < chapter xcii 31  AMBERGRIS >

     Now this ambergris is a very curious
substance, and so important as an article of commerce, that in

     a
certain Nantucket-born
.. <p 407 >
Captain Coffin was examined at the bar of the English House of Commons on that
subject.  for at that time, and indeed until a comparatively late day, the
precise origin of ambergris remained, like amber itself, a problem to the
learned.  Though the word ambergris is but the French compound for grey amber,

     yet the two substances are quite distinct.  For amber, though at times found
on the sea-coast, is also dug up in some far inland soils, whereas ambergris
is never found except upon the sea.  Besides, amber is a hard, transparent,
brittle, odorless substance, used for mouth-pieces to pipes, for beads and
ornaments; but ambergris is soft, waxy, and so highly fragrant and spicy,
that it is largely used in perfumery, in pastiles, precious candles,
hair-powders, and pomatum.  The Turks use it in cooking, and also carry it to
Mecca, for the same purpose that frankincense is carried to St.  Peter's in
Rome.  Some wine merchants drop a few grains into claret, to flavor it.  Who
would think, then, that such fine ladies and gentlemen should regale
themselves with an essence found in the inglorious bowels of a sick whale!
Yet so it is.  By some, ambergris is supposed to be the cause, and by others
the effect, of the dyspepsia in the whale.  How to cure such a dyspepsia it
were hard to say, unless by administering three or four boat loads of
Brandreth's pills, and then running out of harm's way, as laborers do in
blasting rocks.  I have forgotten to say that there were found in this
ambergris, certain hard, round, bony plates, which at first Stubb thought
might be sailors' trousers buttons; but it afterwards turned out that they
were nothing more than pieces of small squid bones embalmed in that manner.
Now that the incorruption of this most fragrant ambergris should be found in
the heart of such decay; is this nothing?  Bethink thee of that saying of St.
Paul in Corinthians, about corruption and incorruption; how that we are sown
in dishonor, but raised in glory.  And likewise call to mind that saying of
paracelsus about what it is that maketh the best musk.  Also forget not the
strange fact that of all things of ill-savor, Cologne-water, in its
rudimental manufacturing stages, is the worst.  I should like to conclude the
chapter with the above appeal, but cannot, owing to my anxiety to repel a
charge often made
.. <p 408 >
against whalemen, and which, in the estimation of some already biased minds,
might be considered as indirectly substantiated by what has been said of the
Frenchman's two whales.  Elsewhere in this volume the slanderous aspersion has
been disproved, that the vocation of whaling is throughout a slatternly,
untidy business.  But there is another thing to rebut.  They hint that all
whales always smell bad.  Now how did this odious stigma originate?  I opine,
that it is plainly traceable to the first arrival of the Greenland whaling
ships in London, more than two centuries ago.  Because those whalemen did not
then, and do not now, try out their oil at sea as the Southern ships have
always done; but cutting up the fresh blubber in small bits, thrust it
through the bung holes of large casks, and carry it home in that manner; the
shortness of the season in those Icy Seas, and the sudden and violent storms
to which they are exposed, forbidding any other course.  The consequence is,
that upon breaking into the hold, and unloading one of these whale
cemeteries, in the Greenland dock, a savor is given forth somewhat similar to
that arising from excavating an old city grave-yard, for the foundations of
a Lying-in Hospital.  I partly surmise also, that this wicked charge against
whalers may be likewise imputed to the existence on the coast of Greenland,
in former times, of a Dutch village called Schmerenburgh or Smeerenberg,
which latter name is the one used by the learned Fogo Von Slack, in his great
work on Smells, a textbook on that subject.  As its name imports (smeer, fat;

     berg, to put up), this village was founded in order to afford a place for
the blubber of the dutch whale fleet to be tried out, without being taken
home to Holland for that purpose.  It was a collection of furnaces,
fat-kettles, and oil sheds; and when the works were in full operation
certainly gave forth no very pleasant savor.  But all this is quite different
from a South Sea Sperm Whaler; which in a voyage of four years perhaps,
after completely filling her hold with oil, does not, perhaps, consume fifty
days in the business of boiling out; and in the state that it is casked, the
oil is nearly scentless.  The truth is, that living or dead, if but decently
treated, whales as a species are by no
.. <p 409 >
means creatures of ill odor; nor can whalemen be recognised, as the people of
the middle ages affected to detect a Jew in the company, by the nose.  Nor
indeed can the whale possibly be otherwise than fragrant, when, as a general
thing, he enjoys such high health; taking abundance of exercise; always out
of doors; though, it is true, seldom in the open air.  I say, that the
motion of a Sperm Whale's flukes above water dispenses a perfume, as when a
musk-scented lady rustles her dress in a warm parlor.  What then shall I liken
the Sperm Whale to for fragrance, considering his magnitude?  Must it not be
to that famous elephant, with jewelled tusks, and redolent with myrrh, which
was led out of an Indian town to do honor to Alexander the Great?
.. <p 409 >