.. < 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.
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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
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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
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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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