with it, as in the case of ordinary ropes;
for while tar, as ordinarily used, makes the hemp more pliable to the
rope-maker, and also renders the rope itself more convenient to the sailor for
common ship use; yet, not only would the ordinary quantity too much stiffen the
whale-line for the close coiling to which it must be subjected; but as most
seamen are beginning to learn, tar in general by no means adds to the rope's
durability or strength, however much it may give it compactness and gloss.
    Of late years the Manilla rope has in the American fishery almost entirely
superseded hemp as a material for whale-lines; for, though not so durable as
hemp, it is stronger, and far more soft and elastic; and I will add (since there
is an æsthetics in all things), is much more handsome and becoming to the boat,
than hemp. Hemp is a dusky, dark fellow, a sort of Indian; but Manilla is as a
golden-haired Circassian to behold.
    The whale-line is only two-thirds of an inch in thickness. At first sight,
you would not think it so strong as it really is. By experiment its one and
fifty yarns will each suspend a weight of one hundred and twenty pounds; so that
the whole rope will bear a strain nearly equal to three tons. In length, the
common sperm whale-line measures something over two hundred fathoms. Toward the
stern of the boat it is spirally coiled away in the tub, not like the worm-pipe
of a still though, but so as to form one round, cheese-shaped mass of densely
bedded sheaves, or layers of concentric spiralisations, without any hollow but
the heart, or minute vertical tube formed at the axis of the cheese. As the
least tangle or kink in the coiling would, in running out, infallibly take
somebody's arm, leg, or entire body off, the utmost precaution is used in
stowing the line in its tub. Some harpooneers will consume almost an entire
morning in this business, carrying the line high aloft and then reeving it
downward through a block toward the tub, so as in the act of coiling to free it
from all possible wrinkles and twists.
    In the English boats two tubs are used instead of one; the same line being
continuously coiled in both tubs. There is some advantage in this; because these
twin-tubs being so small they fit more readily into the boat, and do not strain
it so much; whereas, the American tub, nearly