And likewise call to mind that saying
of Paracelsus about what it is that maketh the best musk.
Also forget not the strange fact that of all things of ill-savor,
Cologne-water, in its rudimental manufacturing stages,
is the worst.
I should like to conclude the chapter with the above appeal,
but cannot, owing to my anxiety to repel a charge often made
against whalemen, and which, in the estimation of some already
biased minds, might be considered as indirectly substantiated
by what has been said of the Frenchman's two whales.
Elsewhere in this volume the slanderous aspersion has been disproved,
that the vocation of whaling is throughout a slatternly,
untidy business. But there is another thing to rebut.
They hint that all whales always smell bad. Now how did this
odious stigma originate?
I opine, that it is plainly traceable to the first arrival of
the Greenland whaling ships in London, more than two centuries ago.
Because those whalemen did not then, and do not now, try out
their oil at sea as the Southern ships have always done;
but cutting up the fresh blubber in small bits, thrust it through
the bung holes of large casks, and carry it home in that manner;
the shortness of the season in those Icy Seas, and the sudden and
violent storms to which they are exposed, forbidding any other course.
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