have forgotten to say that there were found in this ambergris certain
hard, round, bony plates, which at first Stubb thought might be sailors'
trowser-buttons; but it afterwards turned out that they were nothing more than
pieces of small squid bones embalmed in that manner.
    Now that the incorruption of this most fragrant ambergris should be found in
the heart of such decay; is this nothing? Bethink thee of that saying of St.
Paul in Corinthians, about corruption and incorruption; how that we are sown in
dishonour, but raised in glory. And likewise call to mind that saying of
Paracelsus about what it is that maketh the best musk. Also forget not the
strange fact that of all things of ill-savour, Cologne water, in its rudimental
manufacturing stages, is the worst.
    I should like to conclude the chapter with the above appeal, but cannot,
owing to my anxiety to repel a charge often made against whalemen, and which, in
the estimation of some already biased minds, might be considered as indirectly
substantiated by what has been said of the Frenchman's two whales. Elsewhere in
this volume the slanderous aspersion has been disproved, that the vocation of
whaling is throughout a slatternly, untidy business. But there is another thing
to rebut. They hint that all whales always smell bad. Now how did this odious
stigma originate?
    I opine, that it is plainly traceable to the first arrival of the Greenland
whaling-ships in London, more than two centuries ago. Because those whalemen did
not then, and do not now, try out their oil at sea as the Southern ships have
always done; but cutting up the fresh blubber in small bits, thrust it through
the bung-holes of large casks, and carry it home in that manner; the shortness
of the season in those icy seas, and the sudden and violent storms to which they
are exposed, forbidding any other course. The consequence is, that upon breaking
into the hold, and unloading one of these whale cemeteries, in the Greenland
dock, a savour is given forth somewhat similar to that arising from excavating
an old city graveyard, for the foundations of a Lying-in Hospital.
    I partly surmise also, that this wicked charge against whalers may be
likewise imputed to the existence on the coast of Greenland, in former times, of
a Dutch village called Schmerenburgh or Smeerenberg, which latter name is the
one used by the learned Fogo Von Slack, in his great work on Smells, a text-book
on that subject. As its name imports (smeer, fat; berg, to put