CHAPTER 68

  The Blanket

  I have given no small attention to that not unvexed subject, the

skin of the whale. I have had controversies about it with

experienced whalemen afloat, and learned naturalists ashore. My

original opinion remains unchanged; but it is only an opinion.

  The question is, what and where is the skin of the whale. Already

you know what his blubber is. That blubber is something of the

consistence of firm, close-grained beef, but tougher, more elastic and

compact, and ranges from eight or ten to twelve and fifteen inches

in thickness.

  Now, however preposterous it may at first seem to talk of any

creature's skin as being of that sort of consistence and thickness,

yet in point of fact these are no arguments against such a

presumption; because you cannot raise any other dense enveloping layer

from the whale's body but that same blubber; and the outermost

enveloping layer of any animal, if reasonably dense, what can that

be but the skin? True, from the unmarred dead body of the whale, you

may scrape off with your hand an infinitely thin, transparent

substance, somewhat resembling the thinnest shreds of isinglass,

only it is almost as flexible and soft as satin; that is, previous

to being dried, when it not only contracts and thickens, but becomes

rather hard and brittle. I have several such dried bits, which I use

for marks in my whale-books. It is transparent, as I said before;

and being laid upon the printed page, I have sometimes pleased

myself with fancying it exerted a magnifying influence. At any rate,

it is pleasant to read about whales through their own spectacles, as

you may say. But what I am driving at here is this. That same

infinitely thin, isinglass substance, which, I admit, invests the

entire body of the whale, is not so much to be regarded as the skin of

the creature, as the skin of the skin, so to speak; for it were simply

ridiculous to say, that the proper skin of the tremendous whale is

thinner and more tender than the skin of a new-born child. But no more

of this.

  Assuming the blubber to be the skin of the whale; then, when this

skin, as in the case of a very large Sperm Whale, will yield the

bulk of one hundred barrels of oil; and, when it is considered that,

in quantity, or rather weight, that oil, in its expressed state, is

only three fourths, and not the entire substance of the coat; some

idea may hence be had of the enormousness of that animated mass, a

mere part of whose mere integument yields such a lake of liquid as

that. Reckoning ten barrels to the ton, you have ten tons for the

net weight of only three quarters of the stuff of the whale's skin.

  In life, the visible surface of the Sperm Whale is not the least

among the many marvels he presents. Almost invariably it is all over

obliquely crossed and re-crossed with numberless straight marks in

thick array, something like those in the finest Italian line

engravings. But these marks do not seem to be impressed upon the

isinglass substance above mentioned, but seem to be seen through it,

as if they were engraved upon the body itself. Nor is this all. In

some instances, to the quick, observant eye, those linear marks, as in

a veritable engraving, but afford the ground for far other

delineations. These are hieroglyphical; that is, if you call those

mysterious cyphers on the walls of pyramids hieroglyphics, then that

is the proper word to use in the present connexion. By my retentive

memory of the hieroglyphics upon one Sperm Whale in particular, I

was much struck with a plate representing the old Indian characters

chiselled on the famous hieroglyphic palisades on the banks of the

Upper Mississippi. Like those mystic rocks, too, the mystic-marked

whale remains undecipherable. This allusion to the Indian rocks

reminds me of another thing. Besides all the other phenomena which the

exterior of the Sperm Whale presents, he not seldom displays the back,

and more especially his flanks, effaced in great part of the regular

linear appearance, by reason of numerous rude scratches, altogether of

an irregular, random aspect. I should say that those New England rocks

on the seacoast, which Agassiz imagines to bear the marks of violent

scraping contact with vast floating icebergs- I should say, that those

rocks must not a little resemble the Sperm Whale in this particular.

It also seems to me that such scratches in the whale are probably made

by hostile contact with other whales; for I have most remarked them in

the large, full-grown bulls of the species.

  A word or two more concerning this matter of the skin or blubber

of the whale. It has already been said, that it is stript from him

in long pieces, called blanket-pieces. Like most sea-terms, this one

is very happy and significant. For the whale is indeed wrapt up in his

blubber as in a real blanket or counterpane; or, still better, an

Indian poncho slipt over his head, and skirting his extremity. It is

by reason of this cosy blanketing of his body, that the whale is

enabled to keep himself comfortable in all weathers, in all seas,

times, and tides. What would become of a Greenland whale, say, in

those shuddering, icy seas of the North, if unsupplied with his cosy

surtout? True, other fish are found exceedingly brisk in those

Hyperborean waters; but these, be it observed, are your

cold-blooded, lungless fish, whose very bellies are refrigerators;

creatures, that warm themselves under the lee of an iceberg, as a

traveller in winter would bask before an inn fire; whereas, like

man, the whale has lungs and warm blood. Freeze his blood, and he

dies. How wonderful is it then- except after explanation- that this

great monster, to whom corporeal warmth is as indispensable as it is

to man; how wonderful that he should be found at home, immersed to his

lips for life in those Arctic waters! where, when seamen fall

overboard, they are sometimes found, months afterwards,

perpendicularly frozen into the hearts of fields of ice, as a fly is

found glued in amber. But more surprising is it to know, as has been

proved by experiment, that the blood of a Polar whale is warmer than

that of a Borneo negro in summer.

  It does seem to me, that herein we see the rare virtue of a strong

individual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls, and the

rare virtue of interior spaciousness. Oh, man! admire and model

thyself after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou,

too, live in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator;

keep thy blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St.

Peter's, and like the great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons a

temperature of thine own.

  But how easy and how hopeless to teach these fine things! Of

erections, how few are domed like St. Peter's! of creatures, how few

vast as the whale!