Herman Melville -
- In Chapter 20 of Moby Dick Ishmael makes these observations on
ambergris:
- Now this ambergris is a very curious substance, and so important as an
article of commerce, that in a certain Nantucket-born Captain Coffin was
examined at the bar of the English House of Commons on that subject. For
at that time, and indeed until a comparatively late day, the precise
origin of ambergris remained, like amber itself, a problem to the learned.
Though the word ambergris is but the French compound for grey amber, yet
the two substances are quite distinct. For amber, though at times found
on the sea-coast, is also dug up in some far inland soils, whereas
ambergris is never found except upon the sea. Besides, amber is a hard,
transparent, brittle, odorless substance, used for mouth-pieces to pipes,
for beads and ornaments; but ambergris is soft, waxy, and so highly
fragrant and spicy, that it is largely used in perfumery, in pastiles,
precious candles, hair-powders, and pomatum. The Turks use it in cooking,
and also carry it to Mecca, for the same purpose that frankincense is
carried to St. Peter's in Rome. Some wine merchants drop a few grains
into claret, to flavor it. Who would think, then, that such fine ladies
and gentlemen should regale themselves with an essence found in the
inglorious bowels of a sick whale! Yet so it is. By some, ambergris is
supposed to be the cause, and by others the effect, of the dyspepsia in
the whale. How to cure such a dyspepsia it were hard to say, unless by
administering three or four boat loads of Brandreth's pills, and then
running out of harm's way, as laborers do in blasting rocks. I have
forgotten to say that there were found in this ambergris, certain hard,
round, bony plates, which at first Stubbs thought might be sailors'
trousers 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
dishonor, 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-savor, Cologne-water, in its
rudimental manufacturing stages, is the worst.
Melville, H. Moby-Dick, or, the whale. New York: Harper &
Brothers, 1851.
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