“In 40 degrees south, we saw Spermacetti Whales, but did not take any till the first of May, the sea being then covered with them.” —Colnett’s Voyage for the Purpose of Extending the Spermacetti Whale Fishery.
“In the free element beneath me swam,
Floundered and dived, in play, in chace, in battle,
Fishes of every color, form, and kind;
Which language cannot paint, and mariner
Had never seen; from dread Leviathan
To insect millions peopling every wave:
Gather’d in shoals immense, like floating islands,
Led by mysterious instincts through that waste
And trackless region, though on every side
Assaulted by voracious enemies,
Whales, sharks, and monsters, arm’d in front or jaw,
With swords, saws, spiral horns, or hooked fangs.”
—Montgomery’s World before the Flood.
“Io! Pæan! Io! sing.
To the finny people’s king.
Not a mightier whale than this
In the vast Atlantic is;
Not a fatter fish than he,
Flounders round the Polar Sea.”
—Charles Lamb’s Triumph of the Whale.
“In the year 1690 some persons were on a high hill observing the whales spouting and sporting with each other, when one observed: there—pointing to the sea—is a green pasture where our children’s grand-children will go for bread.” —Obed Macy’s History of Nantucket.
“I built a cottage for Susan and myself and made a gateway in the form of a Gothic Arch, by setting up a whale’s jaw bones.” —Hawthorne’s Twice Told Tales.
“She came to bespeak a monument for her first love, who had been killed by a whale in the Pacific ocean, no less than forty years ago.” —Ibid.
“No, Sir, ’tis a Right Whale,” answered Tom; “I saw his spout; he threw up a pair of as pretty rainbows as a Christian would wish to look at. He’s a raal oil-butt, that fellow!” —Cooper’s Pilot.
“The papers were brought in, and we saw in the Berlin Gazette that whales had been introduced on the stage there.” —Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe.
“My God! Mr. Chace, what is the matter?” I answered, “we have been stove by a whale.” —“Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Whale Ship Essex of Nantucket, which was attacked and finally destroyed by a large Sperm Whale in the Pacific Ocean.” By Owen Chace of Nantucket, first mate of said vessel. New York, 1821.
“A mariner sat in the shrouds one night,
The wind was piping free;
Now bright, now dimmed, was the moonlight pale,
And the phospher gleamed in the wake of the whale,
As it floundered in the sea.”
—Elizabeth Oakes Smith.
“The quantity of line withdrawn from the different boats engaged in the capture of this one whale, amounted altogether to 10,440 yards or nearly six English miles. * * *