Throughout the Pacific, and also in Nantucket, and New Bedford,
and Sag Harbor, you will come across lively sketches of whales
and whaling-scenes, graven by the fishermen themselves on
Sperm Whale-teeth, or ladies' busks wrought out of the Right Whale-bone,
and other like skrimshander articles, as the whalemen call
the numerous little ingenious contrivances they elaborately carve
out of the rough material, in their hours of ocean leisure.
Some of them have little boxes of dentistical-looking implements,
specially intended for the skrimshandering business. But, in general,
they toil with their jack-knives alone; and, with that almost
omnipotent tool of the sailor, they will turn you out anything
you please, in the way of a mariner's fancy.
Long exile from Christendom and civilization inevitably restores a man
to that condition in which God placed him, i.e. what is called savagery.
Your true whale-hunter is as much a savage as an Iroquois. I myself
am a savage, owning no allegiance but to the King of the Cannibals;
and ready at any moment to rebel against him.
Now, one of the peculiar characteristics of the savage in
his domestic hours, is his wonderful patience of industry.
An ancient Hawaiian war-club or spear-paddle, in its full
multiplicity and elaboration of carving, is as great a trophy
of human perseverance as a Latin lexicon.
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