 of the whale-ship, which
originally showed them the way, and first interpreted between them and the
savages. They may celebrate as they will the heroes of exploring expeditions,
your Cooks, your Krusensterns; but I say that scores of anonymous captains have
sailed out of Nantucket, that were as great, and greater than your Cook and your
Krusenstern. For in their succourless empty-handedness, they, in the heathenish
sharked waters, and by the beaches of unrecorded, javelin islands, battled with
virgin wonders and terrors that Cook with all his marines and muskets would not
willingly have dared. All that is made such a flourish of in the old South Sea
Voyages, those things were but the lifetime commonplaces of our heroic
Nantucketers. Often, adventures which Vancouver dedicates three chapters to,
these men accounted unworthy of being set down in the ship's common log. Ah, the
world! Oh, the world!
    Until the whale-fishery rounded Cape Horn, no commerce but colonial,
scarcely any intercourse but colonial, was carried on between Europe and the
long line of the opulent Spanish provinces on the Pacific coast. It was the
whaleman who first broke through the jealous policy of the Spanish crown,
touching those colonies; and, if space permitted, it might be distinctly shown
how from those whalemen at last eventuated the liberation of Peru, Chili, and
Bolivia from the yoke of Old Spain, and the establishment of the eternal
democracy in those parts.
    That great America on the other side of the sphere, Australia, was given to
the enlightened world by the whaleman. After its first blunder-born discovery by
a Dutchman, all other ships long shunned those shores as pestiferously
barbarous; but the whale-ship touched there. The whale-ship is the true mother
of that now mighty colony. Moreover, in the infancy of the first Australian
settlement, the emigrants were several times saved from starvation by the
benevolent biscuit of the whale-ship luckily dropping an anchor in their waters.
The uncounted isles of all Polynesia confess the same truth, and do commercial
homage to the whale-ship, that cleared the way for the missionary and the
merchant, and in many cases carried the primitive missionaries to their first
destinations. If that double-bolted land, Japan, is ever to become hospitable,
it is the whale-ship alone to whom the credit will be due; for already she is on
the threshold.
    But if, in the face of all this, you still declare that whaling has no
æsthetically noble associations connected with it, then am I ready to shiver
fifty lances with
