.. < chapter cv 24 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

.. <p 456 >

Tertiary system, those belonging to its latter formations exceed in size

those of its earlier ones.  Of all the pre-adamite whales 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.

.  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

.. <p 457 >

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 whale-ships, 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 life-time --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 Whale 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

.. <p 458 >

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


     elephants;

.. <p 459 >

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 that 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.

.. <p 459 >

