"
--ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH.
"The quantity of line withdrawn from the boats engaged in the
capture of this one whale, amounted altogether to 10,440 yards or
nearly six English miles. ...
"Sometimes the whale shakes its tremendous tail in the air, which,
cracking like a whip, resounds to the distance of three or four
miles."
--SCORESBY.
"Mad with the agonies he endures from these fresh attacks, the
infuriated Sperm Whale rolls over and over; he rears his enormous
head, and with wide expanded jaws snaps at everything around him; he
rushes at the boats with his head; they are propelled before him
with vast swiftness, and sometimes utterly destroyed.
... It is a matter of great astonishment that the consideration of
the habits of so interesting, and, in a commercial point of view, so
important an animal (as the Sperm Whale) should have been so
entirely neglected, or should have excited so little curiosity among
the numerous, and many of them competent observers, that of late
years, must have possessed the most abundant and the most convenient
opportunities of witnessing their habitudes."
--THOMAS BEALE'S HISTORY OF THE SPERM WHALE, 1839.
"The Cachalot" (Sperm Whale) "is not only better armed than the True
Whale" (Greenland or Right Whale) "in possessing a formidable weapon
at either extremity of its body, but also more frequently displays a
disposition to employ these weapons offensively and in manner at
once so artful, bold, and mischievous, as to lead to its being
regarded as the most dangerous to attack of all the known species of
the whale tribe.
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