.. < chapter lxxv 17  THE RIGHT WHALE'S HEAD--CONTRASTED VIEW >

     Crossing the
deck, let us now have a good long look at the Right Whale's head.  As in
general shape the noble Sperm Whale's head may be compared to a Roman
war-chariot (especially in front, where it is so broadly rounded); so, at a
broad view, the Right Whale's head bears a rather inelegant resemblance to a
gigantic galliot-toed shoe.  Two hundred years ago an old Dutch voyager
likened its shape to that of a shoemaker's last.  And in this same last or
shoe, that old woman of the nursery tale, with the swarming brood, might
very comfortably be lodged, she and all her progeny.  But as you come nearer
to this great head it begins to assume different aspects, according to your
point of view.  If you stand on its summit and look at these two f-shaped
spout-holes, you would take the whole head for an enormous bass-viol, and
these
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spiracles, the apertures in its sounding-board.  Then, again, if you fix your
eye upon this strange, crested, comb-like incrustation on the top of the mass
--this green, barnacled thing, which the Greenlanders call the crown, and
the Southern fishers the bonnet of the Right Whale; fixing your eyes solely
on this, you would take the head for the trunk of some huge oak, with a
bird's nest in its crotch.  At any rate, when you watch those live crabs that
nestle here on this bonnet, such an idea will be almost sure to occur to you;

     unless, indeed, your fancy has been fixed by the technical term crown also
bestowed upon it; in which case you will take great interest in thinking how
this mighty monster is actually a diademed king of the sea, whose green
crown has been put together for him in this marvellous manner.  But if this
whale be a king, he is a very sulky looking fellow to grace a diadem.  Look
at that hanging lower lip!  what a huge sulk and pout is there!  a sulk and
pout, by carpenter's measurement, about twenty feet long and five feet deep;
a sulk and pout that will yield you some 500 gallons of oil and more.  A great
pity, now, that this unfortunate whale should be hare-lipped.  The fissure is
about a foot across.  Probably the mother during an important interval was
sailing down the Peruvian coast, when earthquakes caused the beach to gape.
Over this lip, as over a slippery threshold, we now slide into the mouth.
Upon my word were I at Mackinaw, I should take this to be the inside of an
Indian wigwam.  Good Lord!  is this the road that Jonah went?  The roof is
about twelve feet high, and runs to a pretty sharp angle, as if there were a
regular ridge-pole there; while these ribbed, arched, hairy sides, present us
with those wondrous, half vertical, scimetar-shaped slats of whale-bone, say
three hundred on a side, which depending from the upper part of the head or
crown bone, form those Venetian blinds which have elsewhere been cursorily
mentioned.  The edges of these bones are fringed with hairy fibres, through
which the Right Whale strains the water, and in whose intricacies he retains
the small fish, when open-mouthed he goes through the seas of brit in feeding
time.  In the central blinds of bone, as they stand in their natural order,
there are certain curious marks, curves, hollows, and ridges, whereby some
whalemen calculate
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the creature's age, as the age of an oak by its circular rings.  Though the
certainty of this criterion is far from demonstrable, yet it has the savor of
analogical probability.  At any rate, if we yield to it, we must grant a far
greater age to the Right Whale than at first glance will seem reasonable.  In
old times, there seem to have prevailed the most curious fancies concerning
these blinds.  One voyager in Purchas calls them the wondrous whiskers
inside of the whale's mouth; another, hogs' bristles; a third old gentleman
in Hackluyt uses the following elegant language: There are about two hundred

     and fifty fins growing on each side of his upper chop, which arch over his
tongue on each side of his mouth.  As every one knows, these same hogs'
bristles, fins, whiskers, blinds, or whatever you please, furnish to
the ladies their busks and other stiffening contrivances.  But in this
particular, the demand has long been on the decline.  It was in Queen Anne's
time that the bone was in its glory, the farthingale being then all the
fashion.  And as those ancient dames moved about gaily, though in the jaws of
the whale, as you may say; even so, in a shower, with the like
thoughtlessness, do we nowadays fly under the same jaws for protection; the
umbrella being a tent spread over the same bone.  But now forget all about
blinds and whiskers for a moment, and, standing in the Right Whale's mouth,
look around you afresh.  Seeing all these colonnades of bone so methodically
ranged about, would you not think you were inside the great Haarlem organ,
and gazing upon its thousand pipes?  For a carpet to the organ we have a rug
of the softest Turkey --the tongue, which is glued, as it were, to the floor of
the mouth.  It is very fat and tender, and apt to tear in pieces in hoisting
it on deck.  This particular tongue now before us; at a passing glance I
should say it was a six-barreler; that is, it will yield you about that
amount of oil.  Ere this, you must have plainly seen the truth of what I
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started with --that the Sperm Whale and the Right Whale have almost entirely
different heads.  To sum up, then; in the Right Whale's there is no great
well of sperm; no ivory teeth at all; no long, slender mandible of a lower
jaw, like the Sperm Whale's.  Nor in the Sperm Whale are there any of those
blinds of bone; no huge lower lip; and scarcely anything of a tongue.  Again,

     the Right Whale has two external spout-holes, the Sperm Whale only one.
Look your last, now, on these venerable hooded heads, while they yet lie
together; for one will soon sink, unrecorded, in the sea; the other will not
be very long in following.  Can you catch the expression of the Sperm Whale's
there?  It is the same he died with, only some of the longer wrinkles in the
forehead seem now faded away.  I think his broad brow to be full of a
prairie-like placidity, born of a speculative indifference as to death.
But mark the other head's expression.  See that amazing lower lip, pressed by
accident against the vessel's side, so as firmly to embrace the jaw.  Does
not this whole head seem to speak of an enormous practical resolution in
facing death?  This Right Whale I take to have been a Stoic; the Sperm
Whale, a Platonian, who might have taken up Spinoza in his latter years.
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This reminds us that the Right Whale really has a sort of whisker, or rather
a moustache, consisting of a few scattered white hairs on the upper part of
the outer end of the lower jaw.  Sometimes these tufts impart a rather
brigandish expression to his otherwise solemn countenance.
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