The Turks use it in cooking, and also carry it to Mecca, for the same
purpose that frankincense is carried to St. Peter's in Rome. Some wine
merchants drop a few grains into claret, to flavor it.
Who would think, then, that such fine ladies and gentlemen should
regale themselves with an essence found in the inglorious bowels
of a sick whale! Yet so it is. By some, ambergris is supposed to be
the cause, and by others the effect, of the dyspepsia in the whale.
How to cure such a dyspepsia it were hard to say, unless by administering
three or four boat loads of Brandreth's pills, and then running out
of harm's way, as laborers do in blasting rocks.
I have forgotten to say that there were found in this ambergris,
certain hard, round, bony plates, which at first Stubb thought
might be sailors' trousers buttons; but it afterwards turned
out that they were nothing, more than pieces of small squid
bones embalmed in that manner.
Now that the incorruption of this most fragrant ambergris
should be found in the heart of such decay; is this nothing?
Bethink thee of that saying of St. Paul in Corinthians,
about corruption and incorruption; how that we are sown in dishonor,
but raised in glory.
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