“To fifty chosen sylphs of special note,We trust the important charge, the petticoat.Oft have we known that seven-fold fence to fail,Tho’ stuffed with hoops and armed with ribs of whale.” —_Rape of the Lock_.
“If we compare land animals in respect to magnitude,with those that take up their abode in the deep,we shall find they will appear contemptible in the comparison.The whale is doubtless the largest animal in creation.” —_Goldsmith, Nat. Hist_.
“If you should write a fable for little fishes,you would make them speak like great whales.” —_Goldsmith to Johnson_.
“In the afternoon we saw what was supposed to be a rock,but it was found to be a dead whale,which some Asiatics had killed,and were then towing ashore.They seemed to endeavor to conceal themselves behind the whale,in order to avoid being seen by us.” —_Cook’s Voyages_.
“The larger whales, they seldom venture to attack.They stand in so great dread of some of them,that when out at sea they are afraid to mention even their names,and carry dung, lime-stone, juniper-wood,and some other articles of the same nature in their boats,in order to terrify and prevent their too near approach.” —_Uno Von Troil’s Letters on Banks’s and Solander’s Voyage to Iceland in_ 1772.
“The Spermacetti Whale found by the Nantuckois,is an active, fierce animal,and requires vast address and boldness in the fishermen.” —_Thomas Jefferson’s Whale Memorial to the French minister in_ 1778.
“And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it?” —_Edmund Burke’s reference in Parliament to the Nantucket Whale-Fishery_.
“Spain—a great whale stranded on the shores of Europe.” —_Edmund Burke_. (_somewhere_.)
“A tenth branch of the king’s ordinary revenue,said to be grounded on the consideration of his guarding and protecting the seas from pirates and robbers, is the right to _royal_ fish, which are whale and sturgeon. And these, when either thrown ashore or caught near the coast, are the property of the king.” —_Blackstone_.
“Soon to the sport of death the crews repair:Rodmond unerring o’er his head suspends The barbed steel,and every turn attends.” —_Falconer’s Shipwreck_.
“Bright shone the roofs, the domes, the spires,And rockets blew self driven,To hang their momentary fire Around the vault of heaven.
“So fire with water to compare,The ocean serves on high, Up-spouted by a whale in air,To express unwieldy joy.” —_Cowper,on the Queen’s Visit to London_.
“Ten or fifteen gallons of blood are thrown out of the heart at a stroke,with immense velocity.” —_John Hunter’s account of the dissection of a whale_.(_A small sized one_.)
“The aorta of a whale is larger in the bore than the main pipe of the water-works at London Bridge, and the water roaring in its passage through that pipe is inferior in impetus and velocity to the blood gushing from the whale’s heart.” —_Paley’s Theology_.
“The whale is a mammiferous animal without hind feet. ” —_Baron Cuvier_.
“In 40 degrees south, we saw Spermacetti Whales,but did not take any till the first of May,the sea being then covered with them.” —_Colnett’s Voyage for the Purpose of Extending the Spermaceti Whale Fishery_.
“In the free element beneath me swam,Floundered and dived, in play, in chace, in battle,Fishes of every colour, form, and kind;Which language cannot paint,and mariner Had never seen;from dread Leviathan To insect millions peopling every wave:Gather’d in shoals immense, like floating islands,Led by mysterious instincts through that waste And trackless region,though on every side Assaulted by voracious enemies,Whales, sharks, and monsters, arm’d in front or jaw,With swords, saws, spiral horns, or hooked fangs.” —_Montgomery’s World before the Flood_.
“Io!Paean!Io!sing. To the finny people’s king.Not a mightier whale than this In the vast Atlantic is;Not a fatter fish than he,Flounders round the Polar Sea.” —_Charles Lamb’s Triumph of the Whale_.
“In the year 1690 some persons were on a high hill observing the whales spouting and sporting with each other, when one observed: there—pointing to the sea—is a green pasture where our children’s grand-children will go for bread.” —_Obed Macy’s History of Nantucket_.
“I built a cottage for Susan and myself and made a gateway in the form of a Gothic Arch, by setting up a whale’s jaw bones.” —_Hawthorne’s Twice Told Tales_.
“She came to bespeak a monument for her first love,who had been killed by a whale in the Pacific ocean,no less than forty years ago.” —_Ibid_.
“No, Sir, ’tis a Right Whale,” answered Tom;“I saw his sprout; he threw up a pair of as pretty rainbows as a Christian would wish to look at. He’s a raal oil-butt, that fellow!” —_Cooper’s Pilot_.
“The papers were brought in,and we saw in the Berlin Gazette that whales had been introduced on the stage there.” —_Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe_.
“My God!Mr. Chace, what is the matter?” I answered, “we have been stove by a whale.” —“_Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Whale Ship Essex of Nantucket,which was attacked and finally destroyed by a large Sperm Whale in the Pacific Ocean_.” _By Owen Chace of Nantucket, first mate of said vessel. New York_, 1821.
“A mariner sat in the shrouds one night,The wind was piping free; Now bright, now dimmed,was the moonlight pale,And the phospher gleamed in the wake of the whale,As it floundered in the sea.” —_Elizabeth Oakes Smith_.
“The quantity of line withdrawn from the boats engaged in the capture of this one whale, amounted altogether to 10,440 yards or nearly six English miles....
“Sometimes the whale shakes its tremendous tail in the air,which, cracking like a whip,resounds to the distance of three or four miles. ” —_Scoresby_.
“Mad with the agonies he endures from these fresh attacks,the infuriated Sperm Whale rolls over and over;he rears his enormous head,and with wide expanded jaws snaps at everything around him;he rushes at the boats with his head;they are propelled before him with vast swiftness,and sometimes utterly destroyed....It is a matter of great astonishment that the consideration of the habits of so interesting, and, in a commercial point of view, so important an animal (as the Sperm Whale) should have been so entirely neglected, or should have excited so little curiosity among the numerous, and many of them competent observers, that of late years, must have possessed the most abundant and the most convenient opportunities of witnessing their habitudes.” —_Thomas Beale’s History of the Sperm Whale_, 1839.
“The Cachalot” (Sperm Whale) “is not only better armed than the True Whale” (Greenland or Right Whale) “in possessing a formidable weapon at either extremity of its body, but also more frequently displays a disposition to employ these weapons offensively and in manner at once so artful, bold, and mischievous, as to lead to its being regarded as the most dangerous to attack of all the known species of the whale tribe.” —_Frederick Debell Bennett’s Whaling Voyage Round the Globe_, 1840.
October 13. “There she blows,” was sung out from the mast-head. “Where away?” demanded the captain. “Three points off the lee bow,sir.” “Raise up your wheel. Steady!” “Steady, sir.” “Mast-head ahoy!Do you see that whale now?” “Ay ay, sir!A shoal of Sperm Whales!There she blows!There she breaches!” “Sing out!sing out every time!” “Ay Ay, sir!There she blows!there—there—_thar_ she blows—bowes—bo-o-os!” “How far off?” “Two miles and a half.” “Thunder and lightning!so near!Call all hands.” —_J.Ross Browne’s Etchings of a Whaling Cruize_. 1846.