CHAPTER 92

  Ambergris

  Now this ambergris is a very curious substance, and so important

as an article of commerce, that in 1791 a certain Nantucket-born

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' trowsers 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 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 graveyard, 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 text-book 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 with 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 boding 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 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 jeweled tusks, and redolent with myrrh, which was led

out of an Indian town to do honor to Alexander the Great?