Almost invariably it is all over obliquely crossed and
recrossed with numberless straight marks in thick array, something like those in
the finest Italian line engravings. But these marks do not seem to be impressed
upon the isinglass substance above mentioned, but seem to be seen through it, as
if they were engraved upon the body itself. Nor is this all. In some instances,
to the quick, observant eye, those linear marks, as in a veritable engraving,
but afford the ground for far other delineations. These are hieroglyphical; that
is, if you call those mysterious ciphers on the walls of pyramids hieroglyphics,
then that is the proper word to use in the present connection. By my retentive
memory of the hieroglyphics upon one sperm whale in particular, I was much
struck with a plate representing the old Indian characters chiselled on the
famous hieroglyphic palisades on the banks of the Upper Mississippi. Like those
mystic rocks, too, the mystic-marked whale remains undecipherable. This allusion
to the Indian rocks reminds me of another thing. Besides all the other phenomena
which the exterior of the sperm whale presents, he not seldom displays the back,
and more especially his flanks, effaced in great part of the regular linear
appearance, by reason of numerous rude scratches, altogether of an irregular,
random aspect. I should say that those New England rocks on the sea-coast, which
Agassiz imagines to bear the marks of violent scraping contact with vast
floating icebergs - I should say, that those rocks must not a little resemble
the sperm whale in this particular. It also seems to me that such scratches in
the whale are probably made by hostile contact with other whales; for I have
most remarked them in the large full-grown bulls of the species.
    A word or two more concerning this matter of the skin or blubber of the
whale. It has already been said, that it is stripped from him in long pieces,
called blanket-pieces. Like most sea-terms, this one is very happy and
significant. For the whale is indeed wrapped up in his blubber as in a real
blanket or counterpane; or, still better, an Indian poncho slipped over his
head, and skirting his extremity. It is by reason of this cosy blanketing of his
body, that the whale is enabled to keep himself comfortable in all weathers, in
all seas, times, and tides. What would become of a Greenland whale, say, in
those shuddering, icy seas of the North, if unsupplied with his cosy surtout?
True, other fish are found exceedingly brisk in those Hyperborean waters; but
those