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that people there plant toadstools before their houses, to get under

the shade in summer time; that one blade of grass makes an oasis,

three blades in a day's walk a prairie; that they wear quicksand shoes,

something like Laplander snow-shoes; that they are so shut up,

belted about, every way inclosed, surrounded, and made an utter island

of by the ocean, that to their very chairs and tables small clams

will sometimes be found adhering as to the backs of sea turtles.

But these extravaganzas only show that Nantucket is no Illinois.



Look now at the wondrous traditional story of how this

island was settled by the red-men. Thus goes the legend.

In olden times an eagle swooped down upon the New England

coast and carried off an infant Indian in his talons.

With loud lament the parents saw their child borne out of sight over

the wide waters.  They resolved to follow in the same direction.

Setting out in their canoes, after a perilous passage they

discovered the island, and there they found an empty ivory casket,--

the poor little Indian's skeleton.



What wonder, then, that these Nantucketers, born on a beach, should take

to the sea for a livelihood!  They first caught crabs and quahogs

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there are plenty of whalemen, especially among those whaling nations

not sailing under the American flag, who have never hostilely

encountered the Sperm Whale, but whose sole knowledge of the leviathan

is restricted to the ignoble monster primitively pursued in the North;

seated on their hatches, these men will hearken with a childish fireside

interest and awe, to the wild, strange tales of Southern whaling.

Nor is the preeminent tremendousness of the great Sperm Whale

anywhere more feelingly comprehended, than on board of those prows

which stem him.



And as if the now tested reality of his might had in former legendary

times thrown its shadow before it; we find some book naturalists--

Olassen and Povelson--declaring the Sperm Whale not only to be

a consternation to every other creature in the sea, but also to be

so incredibly ferocious as continually to be athirst for human blood.

Nor even down to so late a time as Cuvier's, were these or almost

similar impressions effaced.  For in his Natural History,

the Baron himself affirms that at sight of the Sperm Whale, all fish

(sharks included) are "struck with the most lively terrors,"

and "often in the precipitancy of their flight dash themselves against

the rocks with such violence as to cause instantaneous death."

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western world, which to the eyes of the old trappers and hunters

revived the glories of those primeval times when Adam walked

majestic as a god, bluff-bowed and fearless as this mighty steed.

Whether marching amid his aides and marshals in the van of

countless cohorts that endlessly streamed it over the plains,

like an Ohio; or whether with his circumambient subjects browsing

all around at the horizon, the White Steed gallopingly reviewed

them with warm nostrils reddening through his cool milkiness;

in whatever aspect he presented himself, always to the bravest

Indians he was the object of trembling reverence and awe.

Nor can it be questioned from what stands on legendary record

of this noble horse, that it was his spiritual whiteness chiefly,

which so clothed him with divineness; and that this divineness

had that in it which, though commanding worship, at the same

time enforced a certain nameless terror.



But there are other instances where this whiteness loses

all that accessory and strange glory which invests it in

the White Steed and Albatross.



What is it that in the Albino man so peculiarly repels and often shocks

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and Andromeda; how the lovely Andromeda, the daughter of a king,

was tied to a rock on the sea-coast, and as Leviathan was in

the very act of carrying her off, Perseus, the prince of whalemen,

intrepidly advancing, harpooned the monster, and delivered

and married the maid.  It was an admirable artistic exploit,

rarely achieved by the best harpooneers of the present day;

inasmuch as this Leviathan was slain at the very first dart.

And let no man doubt this Arkite story; for in the ancient Joppa,

now Jaffa, on the Syrian coast, in one of the Pagan temples,

there stood for many ages the vast skeleton of a whale,

which the city's legends and all the inhabitants asserted

to be the identical bones of the monster that Perseus slew.

When the Romans took Joppa, the same skeleton was carried to Italy

in triumph.  What seems most singular and suggestively important

in this story, is this:  it was from Joppa that Jonah set sail.



Akin to the adventure of Perseus and Andromeda--indeed, by some

supposed to be indirectly derived from it--is that famous story

of St. George and the Dragon; which dragon I maintain to have

been a whale; for in many old chronicles whales and dragons

are strangely jumbled together, and often stand for each other.

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for though the creature encountered by that valiant whaleman

of old is vaguely represented of a griffin-like shape,

and though the battle is depicted on land and the saint

on horseback, yet considering the great ignorance of those times,

when the true form of the whale was unknown to artists;

and considering that as in Perseus' case, St. George's

whale might have crawled up out of the sea on the beach;

and considering that the animal ridden by St. George might have

been only a large seal, or sea-horse; bearing all this in mind,

it will not appear altogether incompatible with the sacred

legend and the ancientest draughts of the scene, to hold this

so-called dragon no other than the great Leviathan himself.

In fact, placed before the strict and piercing truth,

this whole story will fare like that fish, flesh, and fowl

idol of the Philistines, Dagon by name; who being planted

before the ark of Israel, his horse's head and both the palms

of his hands fell off from him, and only the stump or fishy

part of him remained.  Thus, then, one of our own noble stamp,

even a whaleman, is the tutelary guardian of England;

and by good rights, we harpooneers of Nantucket should be

enrolled in the most noble order of St. George.  And therefore,

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with no unhappy nervousness, but with vigorous pleasure,

to the stout ringing of her young-armed old husband's hammer;

whose reverberations, muffled by passing through the floors

and walls, came up to her, not unsweetly, in her nursery;

and so, to stout Labor's iron lullaby, the blacksmith's infants

were rocked to slumber.



Oh, woe on woe!  Oh, Death, why canst thou not sometimes be timely?

Hadst thou taken this old blacksmith to thyself ere his full ruin

came upon him, then had the young widow had a delicious grief,

and her orphans a truly venerable, legendary sire to dream of in

their after years; and all of them a care-killing competency.

But Death plucked down some virtuous elder brother, on whose whistling

daily toil solely hung the responsibilities of some other family,

and left the worse than useless old man standing, till the hideous

rot of life should make him easier to harvest.



Why tell the whole?  The blows of the basement hammer every day

grew more and more between; and each blow every day grew fainter

than the last; the wife sat frozen at the window, with tearless eyes,

glitteringly gazing into the weeping faces of her children;