
census of men now in London, and though at the present day not one horn or hoof
of them remains in all that region; and though the cause of this wondrous
extermination was the spear of man; yet the far different nature of the
whalehunt peremptorily forbids so inglorious an end to the leviathan. Forty men
in one ship hunting the sperm whale for forty-eight months think they have done
extremely well, and thank God, if at last they carry home the oil of forty fish.
Whereas, in the days of the old Canadian and Indian hunters and trappers of the
West, when the far west (in whose sunset suns still rise) was a wilderness and a
virgin, the same number of moccasined men, for the same number of months,
mounted on horse instead of sailing in ships, would have slain not forty, but
forty thousand and more buffaloes; a fact that, if need were, could be
statistically stated.
    Nor, considered aright, does it seem any argument in favour of the gradual
extinction of the sperm whale, for example, that in former years (the latter
part of the last century, say) these leviathans, in small pods, were encountered
much oftener than at present, and, in consequence, the voyages were not so
prolonged, and were also much more remunerative. Because, as has been elsewhere
noticed, those whales, influenced by some views to safety, now swim the seas in
immense caravans, so that to a large degree the scattered solitaries, yokes, and
pods, and schools of other days are now aggregated into vast but widely
separated, unfrequent armies. That is all. And equally fallacious seems the
conceit, that because the so-called whalebone whales no longer haunt many
grounds in former years abounding with them, hence that species also is
declining. For they are only being driven from promontory to cape; and if one
coast is no longer enlivened with their jets, then, be sure, some other and
remoter strand has been very recently startled by the unfamiliar spectacle.
    Furthermore: concerning these last-mentioned leviathans, they have two firm
fortresses, which, in all human probability, will forever remain impregnable.
And as upon the invasion of their valleys, the frosty Swiss have retreated to
their mountains; so, hunted from the savannas and glades of the middle seas, the
whalebone whales can at last resort to their Polar citadels, and diving under
the ultimate glassy barriers and walls there, come up among icy fields and
floes; and in a charmed circle of everlasting December bid defiance to all
pursuit from man.
    But as
