CHAPTER 105
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 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. 1825.
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
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 whaleships, 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 lifetime—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 Whales 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 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 4,000 elephants; 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 this 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.
