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’
trousers 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 from 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
boiling 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 jewelled tusks, and
redolent with myrrh, which was led out of an Indian town to do honor to
Alexander the Great?
