.. < chapter lxviii 29  THE BLANKET >


     I have given no small attention to that

not unvexed subject, the skin of the whale.  I have had controversies about it

with experienced whalemen afloat, and learned naturalists ashore.

.. <p 304 >

My original opinion remains unchanged; but it is only an opinion.  The

question is, what and where is the skin of the whale?  Already you know what

his blubber is.  That blubber is something of the consistence of firm,

close-grained beef, but tougher, more elastic and compact, and ranges from

eight or ten to twelve and fifteen inches in thickness.  Now, however

preposterous it may at first seem to talk of any creature's skin as being of

that sort of consistence and thickness, yet in point of fact these are no

arguments against such a presumption; because you cannot raise any other

dense enveloping layer from the whale's body but that same blubber; and the

outermost enveloping layer of any animal, if reasonably dense, what can that

be but the skin?  True, from the unmarred dead body of the whale, you may

scrape off with your hand an infinitely thin, transparent substance, somewhat

resembling the thinnest shreds of isinglass, only it is almost as flexible

and soft as satin; that is, previous to being dried, when it not only

contracts and thickens, but becomes rather hard and brittle.  I have several

such dried bits, which I use for marks in my whale-books.  It is

transparent, as I said before; and being laid upon the printed page, I have

sometimes pleased myself with fancying it exerted a magnifying influence.  At

any rate, it is pleasant to read about whales through their own spectacles,

as you may say.  But what I am driving at here is this.  That same infinitely

thin, isinglass substance, which, I admit, invests the entire body of the

whale, is not so much to be regarded as the skin of the creature, as the

skin of the skin, so to speak; for it were simply ridiculous to say, that

the proper skin of the tremendous whale is thinner and more tender than the

skin of a new-born child.  But no more of this.  Assuming the blubber to be the

skin of the whale; then, when this skin, as in the case of a very large

Sperm Whale, will yield the bulk of one hundred barrels of oil; and, when it

is considered that, in quantity, or rather weight, that oil, in its expressed

state, is only three fourths, and not the entire substance of the coat; some

idea may hence be had of the enormousness of that animated mass, a mere part

of whose mere

.. <p 305 >

integument yields such a lake of liquid as that.  Reckoning ten barrels to the

ton, you have ten tons for the net weight of only three quarters of the stuff

of the whale's skin.  In life, the visible surface of the Sperm Whale is not

the least among the many marvels he presents.  Almost invariably it is all

over obliquely crossed and re-crossed with numberless straight marks in thick

array, something like those in the finest Italian line engravings.  But these

marks do not seem to be impressed upon the isinglass substance above

mentioned, but seem to be seen through it, as if they were engraved upon the

body itself.  Nor is this all.  In some instances, to the quick, observant

eye, those linear marks, as in a veritable engraving, but afford the ground

for far other delineations.  These are hieroglyphical; that is, if you call

those mysterious cyphers on the walls of pyramids hieroglyphics, then that is

the proper word to use in the present connexion.  By my retentive memory of

the hieroglyphics upon one Sperm Whale in particular, I was much struck with

a plate representing the old Indian characters chiselled on the famous

hieroglyphic palisades on the banks of the Upper Mississippi.  Like those

mystic rocks, too, the mystic-marked whale remains undecipherable.  This

allusion to the Indian rocks reminds me of another thing.  Besides all the

other phenomena which the exterior of the Sperm Whale presents, he not

seldom displays the back, and more especially his flanks, effaced in great

part of the regular linear appearance, by reason of numerous rude scratches,

altogether of an irregular, random aspect.  I should say that those New

England rocks on the sea-coast, which Agassiz imagines to bear the marks of

violent scraping contact with vast floating icebergs --I should say, that

those rocks must not a little resemble the Sperm Whale in this particular.  It

also seems to me that such scratches in the whale are probably made by hostile

contact with other whales; for I have most remarked them in the large,

full-grown bulls of the species.  A word or two more concerning this matter

of the skin or blubber of the whale.  It has already been said, that it is

stript from him in long pieces, called blanket-pieces.  Like most sea-terms,

this one is very happy and significant.  For the whale is

.. <p 306 >

indeed wrapt up in his blubber as in a real blanket or counterpane; or, still

better, an Indian poncho slipt over his head, and skirting his extremity.  It

is by reason of this cosy blanketing of his body, that the whale is enabled to

keep himself comfortable in all weathers, in all seas, times, and tides.

What would become of a Greenland whale, say, in those shuddering, icy seas of

the north, if unsupplied with his cosy surtout?  True, other fish are found

exceedingly brisk in those Hyperborean waters; but these, be it observed, are

your cold-blooded, lungless fish, whose very bellies are refrigerators;

creatures, that warm themselves under the lee of an iceberg, as a traveller

in winter would bask before an inn fire; whereas, like man, the whale has

lungs and warm blood.  Freeze his blood, and he dies.  How wonderful is it

then --except after explanation --that this great monster, to whom corporeal

warmth is as indispensable as it is to man; how wonderful that he should be

found at home, immersed to his lips for life in those Arctic waters!  where,

when seamen fall overboard, they are sometimes found, months afterwards,

perpendicularly frozen into the hearts of fields of ice, as a fly is found

glued in amber.  But more surprising is it to know, as has been proved by

experiment, that the blood of a Polar whale is warmer than that of a Borneo

negro in summer.  It does seem to me, that herein we see the rare virtue of a


     strong individual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls, and the rare

virtue of interior spaciousness.  Oh, man!  admire and model thyself after the

whale!  Do thou, too, remain warm among ice.  Do thou, too, live in this world

without being of it.  Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood fluid at the

Pole.  Like the great dome of St.  Peter's, and like the great whale, retain,


     O man!  in all seasons a temperature of thine own.  But how easy and how

hopeless to teach these fine things!  Of erections, how few are domed like St.

Peter's!  of creatures, how few vast as the whale!

.. <p 307 >