CHAPTER 105

  Does the Whale's Magnitude Diminish? - Will He Perish?

  Inasmuch, then, as this Leviathan comes floundering down upon us

from the head-waters of the Eternities, it may be fitly inquired,

whether, in the long course of his generations, he has not degenerated

from the original bulk of his sires.

  But upon investigation we find, that not only are the whales of

the present day superior in magnitude to those whose fossil remains

are found in the Tertiary system (embracing a distinct geological

period prior to man), but of the whales found in that Tertiary system,

those belonging to its latter formations exceed in size those of its

earlier ones.

  Of all the pre-adamite whale yet exhumed, by far the largest is

the Alabama one mentioned in the last chapter, and that was less

than seventy feet in length in the skeleton. Whereas, we have

already seen, that the tape-measure gives seventy-two feet for the

skeleton of a large sized modern whale. And I have heard, on

whalemen's authority, that Sperm Whales have been captured near a

hundred feet long at the time of capture.

  But may it not be, that while the whales of the present hour are

an advance in magnitude upon those of all previous geological periods;

may it not be, that since Adam's time they have degenerated?

  Assuredly, we must conclude so, if we are to credit the accounts

of such gentlemen as Pliny, and the ancient naturalists generally. For

Pliny tells us of Whales that embraced acres of living bulk, and

Aldrovandus of others which measured eight hundred feet in length-

Rope Walks and Thames Tunnels of Whales! And even in the days of Banks

and Solander, Cooke's naturalists, we find a Danish member of the

Academy of Sciences setting down certain Iceland Whales

(reydan-siskur, or Wrinkled Bellies) at one hundred and twenty

yards; that is, three hundred and sixty feet. And Lacepede, the

French naturalist, in his elaborate history of whales, in the very

beginning of his work (page 3), sets down the Right Whale at one

hundred metres, three hundred and twenty-eight feet. And this work was

published so late as A.D. 1825.

  But will any whaleman believe these stories? No. The whale of to-day

is as big as his ancestors in Pliny's time. And if ever I go where

Pliny is, I, a whaleman (more than he was), will make bold to tell him

so. Because I cannot understand how it is, that while the Egyptian

mummies that were buried thousands of years before even Pliny was

born, do not measure so much in their coffins as a modern Kentuckian

in his socks; and while the cattle and other animals sculptured on the

oldest Egyptian and Nineveh tablets, by the relative proportions in

which they are drawn, just as plainly prove that the high-bred,

stall-fed, prize cattle of Smithfield, not only equal, but far

exceed in magnitude the fattest of Pharaoh's fat kine; in the face

of all this, I will not admit that of all animals the whale alone

should have degenerated.

  But still another inquiry remains; one often agitated by the more

recondite Nantucketers. Whether owing to the almost omniscient

look-outs at the mast-heads of the whaleships, now penetrating even

through Behring's straits, and into the remotest secret drawers and

lockers of the world; and the thousand harpoons and lances darted

along all continental coasts; the moot point is, whether Leviathan can

long endure so wide a chase, and so remorseless a havoc; whether he

must not at last be exterminated from the waters, and the last

whale, like the last man, smoke his last pipe, and then himself

evaporate in the final puff.

  Comparing the humped herds of whales with the humped herds of

buffalo, which, not forty years ago, overspread by tens of thousands

the prairies of Illinois and Missouri, and shook their iron manes

and scowled with their thunder-clotted brows upon the sites of

populous river-capitals, where now the polite broker sells you land at

a dollar an inch; in such a comparison an irresistible argument

would seem furnished, to show that the hunted whale cannot now

escape speedy extinction.

  But you must look at this matter in every light. Though so short a

period ago- not a good lifetime- the census of the buffalo in Illinois

exceeded the census of men now in London, and though at the present

day not one horn or hoof of them remains in all that region; and

though the cause of this wondrous extermination was the spear of

man; yet the far different nature of the whale-hunt peremptorily

forbids so inglorious an end to the Leviathan. Forty men in one ship

hunting the Sperm Whales for forty-eight months think they have done

extremely well, and thank God, if at last they carry home the oil of

forty fish. Whereas, in the days of the old Canadian and Indian

hunters and trappers of the West, when the far west (in whose sunset

suns still rise) was a wilderness and a virgin, the same number of

moccasined men, for the same number of months, mounted on horse

instead of sailing in ships, would have slain not forty, but forty

thousand and more buffaloes; a fact that, if need were, could be

statistically stated.

  Nor, considered aright, does it seem any argument in favor of the

gradual extinction of the Sperm Whale, for example, that in former

years (the latter part of the last century, say) these Leviathans,

in small pods, were encountered much oftener than at present, and,

in consequence, the voyages were not so prolonged, and were also

much more remunerative. Because, as has been elsewhere noticed,

those whales, influenced by some views to safety, now swim the seas in

immense caravans, so that to a large degree the scattered

solitaries, yokes, and pods, and schools of other days are now

aggregated into vast but widely separated, unfrequent armies. That

is all. And equally fallacious seems the conceit, that because the

so-called whale-bone whales no longer haunt many grounds in former

years abounding with them, hence that species also is declining. For

they are only being driven from promontory to cape; and if one coast

is no longer enlivened with their jets, then, be sure, some other

and remoter strand has been very recently startled by the unfamiliar

spectacle.

  Furthermore: concerning these last mentioned Leviathans, they have

two firm fortresses, which, in all human probability, will for ever

remain impregnable. And as upon the invasion of their valleys, the

frosty Swiss have retreated to their mountains; so, hunted from the

savannas and glades of the middle seas, the whale-bone whales can at

last resort to their Polar citadels, and diving under the ultimate

glassy barriers and walls there, come up among icy fields and floes!

and in a charmed circle of everlasting December, bid defiance to all

pursuit from man.

  But as perhaps fifty of these whale-bone whales are harpooned for

one cachalot, some philosophers of the forecastle have concluded

that this positive havoc has already very seriously diminished their

battalions. But though for some time past a number of these whales,

not less than 13,000, have been annually slain on the nor'west coast

by the Americans alone; yet there are considerations which render even

this circumstance of little or no account as an opposing argument in

this matter.

  Natural as it is to be somewhat incredulous concerning the

populousness of the more enormous creatures of the globe, yet what

shall we say to Harto, the historian of Goa, when he tells us that

at one hunting the King of Siam took 4,000 elephants; that in those

regions elephants are numerous as droves of cattle in the temperate

climes. And there seems no reason to doubt that if these elephants,

which have now been hunted for thousands of years, by Semiramis, by

Porus, by Hannibal, and by all the successive monarchs of the East- if

they still survive there in great numbers, much more may the great

whale outlast all hunting, since he has a pasture to expatiate in,

which is precisely twice as large as all Asia, both Americas, Europe

and Africa, New Holland, and all the Isles of the sea combined.

  Moreover: we are to consider, that from the presumed great longevity

of whales, their probably attaining the age of a century and more,

therefore at any one period of time, several distinct adult

generations must be contemporary. And what this is, we may soon gain

some idea of, by imagining all the grave-yards, cemeteries, and family

vaults of creation yielding up the live bodies of all the men,

women, and children who were alive seventy-five years ago; and

adding this countless host to the present human population of the

globe.

  Wherefore, for all these things, we account the whale immortal in

his species, however perishable in his individuality. He swam the seas

before the continents broke water; he once swam over the site of the

Tuileries, and Windsor Castle, and the Kremlin. In Noah's flood he

despised Noah's Ark; and if ever the world is to be again flooded,

like the Netherlands, to kill off its rats, then the eternal whale

will still survive, and rearing upon the topmost crest of the

equatorial flood, spout his frothed defiance to the skies.