CHAPTER 6

  The Street

  If I had been astonished at first catching a glimpse of so

outlandish an individual as Queequeg circulating among the polite

society of a civilized town, that astonishment soon departed upon

taking my first daylight stroll through the streets of New Bedford.

  In thoroughfares nigh the docks, any considerable seaport will

frequently offer to view the queerest looking nondescripts from

foreign parts. Even in Broadway and Chestnut streets, Mediterranean

mariners will sometimes jostle the affrighted ladies. Regent Street is

not unknown to Lascars and Malays; and at Bombay, in the Apollo Green,

live Yankees have often scared the natives. But New Bedford beats

all Water Street and Wapping. In these last-mentioned haunts you see

only sailors; in New Bedford, actual cannibals stand chatting at

street corners; savages outright; many of whom yet carry on their

bones unholy flesh. It makes a stranger stare.

  But, besides the Feegeeans, Tongatobooarrs, Erromanggoans,

Pannangians, and Brighggians, and, besides the wild specimens of the

whaling-craft which unheeded reel about the streets, you will see

other sights still more curious, certainly more comical. There

weekly arrive in this town scores of green Vermonters and New

Hampshire men, all athirst for gain and glory in the fishery. They are

mostly young, of stalwart frames; fellows who have felled forests, and

now seek to drop the axe and snatch the whale-lance. Many are as green

as the Green Mountains whence they came. In some things you would

think them but a few hours old. Look there! that chap strutting

round the corner. He wears a beaver hat and swallow-tailed coat,

girdled with a sailor-belt and a sheath-knife. Here comes another with

a sou'-wester and a bombazine cloak.

  No town-bred dandy will compare with a country-bred one- I mean a

downright bumpkin dandy- a fellow that, in the dog-days, will mow

his two acres in buckskin gloves for fear of tanning his hands. Now

when a country dandy like this takes it into his head to make a

distinguished reputation, and joins the great whale-fishery, you

should see the comical things he does upon reaching the seaport. In

bespeaking his sea-outfit, he orders bell-buttons to his waistcoats;

straps to his canvas trowsers. Ah, poor Hay-Seed! how bitterly will

burst those straps in the first howling gale, when thou art driven,

straps, buttons, and all, down the throat of the tempest.

  But think not that this famous town has only harpooneers, cannibals,

and bumpkins to show her visitors. Not at all. Still New Bedford is

a queer place. Had it not been for us whalemen, that tract of land

would this day perhaps have been in as howling condition as the

coast of Labrador. As it is, parts of her back country are enough to

frighten one, they look so bony. The town itself is perhaps the

dearest place to live in, in all New England. It is a land of oil,

true enough: but not like Canaan; a land, also, of corn and wine.

The streets do not run with milk; nor in the spring-time do they

pave them with fresh eggs. Yet, in spite of this, nowhere in all

America will you find more patrician-like houses; parks and gardens

more opulent, than in New Bedford. Whence came they? how planted

upon this once scraggy scoria of a country?

  Go and gaze upon the iron emblematical harpoons round yonder lofty

mansion, and your question will be answered. Yes; all these brave

houses and flowery gardens came from the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian

oceans. One and all, they were harpooned and dragged up hither from

the bottom of the sea. Can Herr Alexander perform a feat like that?

  In New Bedford, fathers, they say, give whales for dowers to their

daughters, and portion off their nieces with a few porpoises

a-piece. You must go to New Bedford to see a brilliant wedding; for,

they say, they have reservoirs of oil in every house, and every

night recklessly burn their lengths in spermaceti candles.

  In summer time, the town is sweet to see; full of fine maples-

long avenues of green and gold. And in August, high in air, the

beautiful and bountiful horse-chestnuts, candelabra-wise, proffer

the passer-by their tapering upright cones of congregated blossoms. So

omnipotent is art; which in many a district of New Bedford has

superinduced bright terraces ot flowers upon the barren refuse rocks

thrown aside at creation's final day.

  And the women of New Bedford, they bloom like their own red roses.

But roses only bloom in summer; whereas the fine carnation of their

cheeks is perennial as sunlight in the seventh heavens. Elsewhere

match that bloom of theirs, ye cannot, save in Salem, where they

tell me the young girls breathe such musk, their sailor sweethearts

smell them miles off shore, as though they were drawing nigh the

odorous Moluccas instead of the Puritanic sands.