After its first blunder-born discovery by a Dutchman, all other ships,
long shunned those shores as pestiferously barbarous;
but the whale-ship touched there. The whale-ship is the true
mother of that now mighty colony. Moreover, in the infancy
of the first Australian settlement, the emigrants were several
times saved from starvation by the benevolent biscuit of
the whale-ship luckily dropping an anchor in their waters.
The uncounted isles of all Polynesia confess the same truth,
and do commercial homage to the whale-ship, that cleared the way
for the missionary and the merchant, and in many cases carried
the primitive missionaries to their first destinations.
If that double-bolted land, Japan, is ever to become hospitable,
it is the whale-ship alone to whom the credit will be due;
for already she is on the threshold.
But if, in the face of all this, you still declare that whaling
has no aesthetically noble associations connected with it,
then am I ready to shiver fifty lances with you there,
and unhorse you with a split helmet every time.
The whale has no famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler,
you will say.
The whale no famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler?
Who wrote the first account of our Leviathan? Who but mighty Job?
And who composed the first narrative of a whaling-voyage? Who,
but no less a prince than Alfred the Great, who, with his own
royal pen, took down the words from Other, the Norwegian
whale-hunter of those times! And who pronounced our glowing
eulogy in Parliament? Who, but Edmund Burke!
True enough, but then whalemen themselves are poor devils;
they have no good blood in their veins.
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