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generally forty-two teeth in all; in old whales, much worn down,

but undecayed; nor filled after our artificial fashion.

The jaw is afterwards sawn into slabs, and piled away like joists

for building houses.







CHAPTER 75



The Right Whale's Head - Contrasted View





Crossing the deck, let us now have a good long look at the 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 spiracles, the apertures in its soundingboard.

Then, again, if you fix your eye upon this strange, crested,

comblike 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,

scimitar-shaped slats of whalebone, 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 openmouthed 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 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."





*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.





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 of 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 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.