Reckoning ten barrels to the ton, you have ten tons for the net weight
of only three quarters of the stuff of the whale's skin.
In life, the visible surface of the Sperm Whale is not the least among
the many marvels he presents. Almost invariably it is all over obliquely
crossed and re-crossed with numberless straight marks in thick array,
something like those in the finest Italian line engravings.
But these marks do not seem to be impressed upon the isinglass
substance above mentioned, but seem to be seen through it,
as if they were engraved upon the body itself. Nor is this all.
In some instances, to the quick, observant eye, those linear marks,
as in a veritable engraving, but afford the ground for far
other delineations. These are hieroglyphical; that is, if you call
those mysterious cyphers on the walls of pyramids hieroglyphics,
then that is the proper word to use in the present connexion.
By my retentive memory of the hieroglyphics upon one Sperm Whale
in particular, I was much struck with a plate representing
the old Indian characters chiselled on the famous hieroglyphic
palisades on the banks of the Upper Mississippi. Like those
mystic rocks, too, the mystic-marked whale remains undecipherable.
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