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Table of Contents
Chapter 68
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. ..
2 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 ..
3 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
..
4 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! ..
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