Chapter 70.00: CHAPTER 68. The Blanket.

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CHAPTER 68. The Blanket.
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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. 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
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 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!