Yet where is the mariner who will tell thee, "Sir, it was not so much
the fear of striking hidden rocks, as the fear of that hideous whiteness
that so stirred me?"
Second: To the native Indian of Peru, the continual sight of
the snowhowdahed Andes conveys naught of dread, except, perhaps,
in the mere fancying of the eternal frosted desolateness reigning
at such vast altitudes, and the natural conceit of what a fearfulness
it would be to lose oneself in such inhuman solitudes. Much the same
is it with the backwoodsman of the West, who with comparative
indifference views an unbounded prairie sheeted with driven snow,
no shadow of tree or twig to break the fixed trance of whiteness.
Not so the sailor, beholding the scenery of the Antarctic seas;
where at times, by some infernal trick of legerdemain in the powers
of frost and air, he, shivering and half shipwrecked, instead of
rainbows speaking hope and solace to his misery, views what seems
a boundless churchyard grinning upon him with its lean ice monuments
and splintered crosses.
But thou sayest, methinks this white-lead chapter about
whiteness is but a white flag hung out from a craven soul;
thou surrenderest to a hypo, Ishmael.
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