CHAPTER 56

  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, &c.

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 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

fore-ground 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 inserted into his spout-hole.

  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 of

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 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 ship, the little craft stands

half-erect out of the water, like a rearing horse. From that 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.