105 Does the Whale Diminish?
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 siresbulk of his sires: William Scoresby in his Account of the Arctic Regions and Charles Wilkes in his Narrative of the US Exploring Expedition had both considered whether the size of whales and their numbers had diminished over time. (See Mansfield and Vincent, 811.).
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 PlinyPliny: Pliny, the Elder is the Roman naturalist mentioned in Chs. 32 and 56., and the ancient naturalists generally. For Pliny tells us of whales that embraced acres of living bulk, and AldrovandusAldrovandus: Sixteenth-century Italian naturalist and physician Ulise Aldrovandi is also mentioned in Ch. 32. of others which measured eight hundred feet in length—Rope Walks and Thames Tunnels of WhalesRope Walks and Thames Tunnels of Whales!: Ishmael's metaphoric exclamation concerning whale size draws upon two familiar images. In seaports, rope was manufactured in low-lying warehouse-like buildings called "rope-walks," which could be 1,000 feet long or more. Opened in 1843 and visited by Melville six years later, the 1,200-foot-long, high-arched London tunnel under the Thames River, between Wapping and Rotherhithe, also provides Ahab with a model for the chest of his “complete man” in Ch. 108.! And even in the days of Banks and SolanderBanks and Solander: On his first voyage around the world (1768–1771), Captain James Cook, the greatest explorer of the eighteenth century, brought along naturalists Joseph Banks (later Sir Joseph, and president of the Royal Society) and Daniel Charles Solander., Cook’s naturalists, we find a Danish memberDanish member: Uno von Troil, Archbishop of Upsala, Sweden, wrote Letters on Iceland (1780), cited in “Extracts,” but was not a Dane. of the Academy of Sciences setting down certain Iceland Whales (reydar-fiskur, or Wrinkled Bellies) at one hundred and twenty yards; that is, three hundred and sixty feet. And LacépèdeLacépède: Melville repeats his error of Ch. 55, confusing the death date of Bernard Germain Étienne de Lacépède, comte de Lacépède (1756-1825) with the 1804 publication date of his Histoire Naturelle des Cétacées. His source for Lacépède’s words is William Scoresby (see Mansfield and Vincent, 811–12)., 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 kinePharaoh’s fat kine: For Pharaoh’s "kine" (cattle), see Genesis 41. Melville visited London’s Smithfield cattle market in 1849 (NN Journals, 15).; 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 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 pointmoot point: issue for debate. 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 exterminationthis wondrous extermination: Melville's “wondering” about species extinction and genocide began as early as his witnessing the diminished herds of buffalo on his 1840 tour of the West and continued throughout his writing career. Here, he compares the former population of American bison in Illinois alone to the contemporary population of London (about 2.3 million in 1851) in order to underscore the gravity of loss in the significantly diminished herd (rated “nearly threatened” in 2022) and, by extension, to focus on the threat of human predation on the sperm whale (rated “vulnerable”). In The Encantadas (1854), Melville reports diminishing whale numbers in the once fecund bay of the Isle of Albemarle (also referenced in Ch. 127 and "another and still stranger world" in Ch. 87). Decades later, in "John Marr" (1888), he laments "the double exodus" of both Native Americans ("remnant Indians") and buffalo on the Illinois prairie. See Bryant, Herman Melville: A Half Known Life, vol. 2, ch. 60. 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 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, yokesyokes: pairs., 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 capedriven from promontory to cape: Geographical play on “driven from pillar to post,” that is, forced from one predicament to another.; 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 cachalotcachalot: sperm whale (French)., 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 Horto, the historian of GoaHorto, the historian of Goa: Sir Thomas Browne's
Pseudodoxia Epidemica cites this report by Garcias ab Horto, latinized name of Garcia de Orta, sixteenth-century Portuguese physician and pharmacologist in Goa, India., when he tells us that at one hunting the King of Siam took 4000 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 Hannibalby Semiramis, by Porus, by Hannibal: In Assyrian legend, Queen Semiramis founded Babylon and Nineveh; the powerful Indian ruler Porus is mentioned in Ch. 87; and Carthaginian general Hannibal (ca. 247–183 BCE) most famously took elephants across the Alps to battle the Roman Empire., 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 HollandNew Holland: Early name for Australia, discovered by Dutch seamen., 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 KremlinTuileries, and Windsor Castle, and the Kremlin: famous palaces in Paris, Windsor (England), and Moscow, all associated with royalty and extraordinary architecture. . 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.