The Book Of Curiosities Part 18

CURIOSITIES RESPECTING FISHES.--(_Concluded._)

_The Whale--Whale Fishery--The Kraken._

"----------------------------The whales Toss in foam their lashing tails.

Wallowing unwieldly, enormous in their gait, They seem a moving land, and at their gills Draw in, and at their trunk spout out, a sea."

The following account of the great Northern, or GREENLAND WHALE, was first published by Mr. W. Scoresby, jun. M. W. S. in the Memoirs of the Wernerian Society, vol. I.

"The whale, when fullgrown, is from 50 to 65 feet in length, and from 30 to 40 in circ.u.mference, immediately before the fins. It is thickest a little behind the fins, and from thence gradually tapers towards the tail, and slightly towards the neck. It is cylindrical from the neck until near the junction of the tail and body, where it becomes rigid.

"The head has a triangular shape. The bones of the head are very porous, and full of a fine kind of oil. When the oil is drained out, the bone is so light as to swim in water. The jaw-bones, the most striking portions of the head, are from 20 to 25 feet in length, are curved, and the s.p.a.ce between them is 9 or 10 feet, by 18 or 20. They give shape to the under part of the head, which is almost perfectly flat, and is about 20 feet in length by 12 in breadth. The tongue is of great size, and yields a ton or more of oil. The lips, which are at right angles to the flat part of the base of the head, are firm and hard, and yield about two tons of oil.

"To the upper jaw is attached the substance called whalebone, which is straight in some individuals, and in others convex. The laminae, or blades, are not all of equal length: neither are the largest exactly in the middle of the series, but somewhat nearer the throat; from this point they become gradually shorter each way. In each side of the mouth are about 200 laminae of whalebone. They are not perfectly flat; for besides the longitudinal curvature already mentioned, they are curved transversely. The largest laminae are from ten to fourteen feet, very rarely fifteen feet, in length.

The breadth of the largest, at the thick ends, or where they are attached to the jaw, is about a foot. The Greenland fishers estimate the size of the whale by the length of the whalebone: where the whalebone is six feet long, then the whale is said to be a size-fish. In suckers, or young whales still under the protection of the mother, the whalebone is only a few inches long. The whalebone is immediately covered by the two under lips, the edges of which, when the mouth is shut, overlap the upper part in a squamous manner.

"On the upper part of the head there is a double opening, called the spout-holes, or blow-holes. Their external orifices are like two slits, which do not lie parallel, but form an acute angle with each other.

Through these openings the animal breathes.

"The eyes are very small, not larger than those of an ox; yet the whale appears to be quick of sight. They are situated about a foot above where the upper and under lip join.

"In the whale, the sense of hearing seems to be rather obtuse.

"The throat is so narrow as scarcely to admit a hen's egg.

"The fins are from four to five feet broad, and eight to ten feet long, and seem only to be used in bearing off their young, in turning, and giving a direction to the velocity produced by the tail.

"The tail is horizontal, from 20 to 30 feet in breadth, indented in the middle, and the two lobes pointed and turned outwards. In it lies the whole strength of the animal. By means of the tail, the whale advances itself in the water with greater or less rapidity; if the motion is slow, the tail cuts the water obliquely, like forcing a boat forward by the operation of sculling; but if the motion is very rapid, it is effected by an undulating motion of the rump.

"The skin in some whales is smooth and shining; in others, it is furrowed, like the water-lines in laid paper, but coa.r.s.er.

"The colour is black, gray, and white, and a tinge of yellow about the lower parts of the head. The back, upper part of the head, most of the belly, the fins, tail, and part of the under jaw, are deep black. The fore part of the under jaw, and a little of the belly, are white, and the junction of the tail with the body gray. Such are the common colours of the adult whale. I have seen piebald whales. Such whales as are below size are almost entirely of a bluish black colour. The skin of suckers is of a pale bluish colour. The cuticle, or scarf-skin, is no thicker than parchment; the true skin is from three-fourths to an inch in thickness all over the body.

"Immediately beneath the skin lies the blubber, or fat, from 10 to 20 inches in thickness, varying in different parts of the body, as well as in different individuals. The colour, also, is not always the same, being white, red, and yellow; and it also varies in denseness. It is princ.i.p.ally for the blubber that the Greenland fishery is carried on. It is cut from the body in large lumps, and carried on board the ship, and then cut into smaller pieces. The fleshy parts, and skin connected with the blubber, are next separated from it, and it is again cut into such pieces as will admit of its being pa.s.sed into casks by the bung-hole, which is only three or four inches in diameter. In these casks it is conveyed home, where it is boiled in vessels capable of containing from three to six tons, for the purpose of extracting the oil from the fritters, which are tendinous fibres, running in various directions, and containing the oil, or rather connecting together the cellular substance which contains it. These fibres are finest next the skin, thinnest in the middle, and coa.r.s.est near the flesh.

"The whales, according to their size, produce from two to twenty tons of oil. The flesh of the young whale is of a fine red colour; that of the old approaches to black, and is coa.r.s.e, like that of a bull, and is said to be dry and lean when boiled, because there is little fat intermixed with the flesh.

"The food of the whale is generally supposed to consist of different kinds of sepiae, medusae, or the clio limacina of Linnaeus; but I have great reason to believe, that it is chiefly, if not altogether, of the squill or shrimp tribe; for, on examining the stomach of one of large size, nothing else was found in it; they were about half an inch long, semi-transparent, and of a pale red colour. I also found a great quant.i.ty in the mouth of another, having been apparently vomited by it. When the whale feeds, it swims with considerable velocity under water, with its mouth wide open; the water enters by the forepart, but is poured out again at the sides, and the food is entangled and sifted as it were by the whalebone, which does not suffer any thing to escape.

"It seldom remains longer below the surface than twenty to thirty minutes; when it comes up again to blow, it will perhaps remain ten, twenty, or thirty minutes at the surface of the water, when nothing disturbs it. In calm weather, it sometimes sleeps in this situation. It sometimes ascends with so much force, as to leap entirely out of the water; when swimming at its greatest velocity, it moves at the rate of seven to nine miles an hour.

"Its maternal affection deserves notice. The young one is frequently struck for the sake of its mother, which will soon come up close by it, encourage it to swim off, a.s.sist it by taking it under its fin, and seldom deserts it while life remains. It is then very dangerous to approach, as she loses all regard for her own safety in anxiety for the preservation of her cub, dashing about most violently, and not dreading to rise even amidst the boats. Except, however, when the whale has young to protect, the male is in general more active and dangerous than the female, especially males of about nine feet bone."

To the above account of Mr. Scoresby's, we shall add the following particulars:

The fidelity of whales to each other exceeds whatever we are told even of the constancy of birds. Some fishers, as Anderson informs us, having struck one of two whales, a male and a female, that were in company together, the wounded fish made a long and terrible resistance; it struck down a boat with three men in it, with a single blow of its tail, by which all went to the bottom. The other still attended its companion, and lent it every a.s.sistance; till, at last, the fish that was struck sunk under the number of its wounds; while its faithful a.s.sociate, disdaining to survive the loss, with great bellowing stretched itself upon the dead fish, and shared its fate.

Inoffensive as the whale is, it is not without enemies. There is a small animal, of the sh.e.l.l-fish kind, called the whale-louse, that sticks to its body, as we see sh.e.l.ls sticking to the foul bottom of a ship. This insinuates itself chiefly under the fins; and whatever efforts the great animal makes, it still keeps its hold, and lives upon the fat, which it is provided with instruments to arrive at.

The sword-fish is, however, the whale's most terrible enemy. At the sight of this little animal, the whale seems agitated in an extraordinary manner, leaping from the water as if with affright, wherever it appears; the whale perceives it at a distance, and flies from it in the opposite direction. The whale has no instrument of defence except the tail; with that it endeavours to strike the enemy, and a single blow taking place would effectually destroy its adversary; but the sword-fish is as active as the other is strong, and easily avoids the stroke; then bounding into the air, it falls upon its enemy, and endeavours not to pierce with its pointed beak, but to cut with its toothed edges. The sea all about is soon dyed with blood, proceeding from the wounds of the whale; while the enormous animal vainly endeavours to reach its invader, and strikes with its tail against the surface of the water with impotent fury, making a report at each blow louder than the noise of a cannon.

There is still another powerful enemy of this fish, which is called the oria, or killer. A number of these are said to surround the whale in the same manner as dogs get round a bull. Some attack it with their teeth behind; others attempt it before; until, at last, the great animal is torn down, and its tongue is said to be the only part they devour, when they have made it their prey.

But of all the enemies of these enormous fishes, man is the greatest and most formidable; he alone destroys more in a year than the rest in an age, and actually has thinned their numbers in that part of the world where they are chiefly sought.

The reader will be interested in the following account of THE WHALE FISHERY.

As when enclosing harpooners a.s.sail, In hyperborean seas, the slumbering whale; Soon as their javelins pierce the scaly side, He groans, he darts impetuous down the tide; And rack'd all o'er with lacerating pain, He flies remote beneath the flood in vain.

_Falconer._

Whales are chiefly caught in the North Sea: the largest sort are found about Greenland, or Spitzbergen. At the first discovery of this country, whales not being used to be disturbed, frequently came into the very bays, and were accordingly killed almost close to the sh.o.r.e, so that the blubber being cut off, was immediately boiled into oil on the spot. The ships, in those times, took in nothing but the pure oil and the fins, and all the business was executed in the country; by which means, a ship could bring home the product of many more whales, than she can according to the present method of conducting this trade. The fishery also was then so plentiful, that they were obliged sometimes to send other ships to fetch off the oil they had made, the quant.i.ty being more than the fishing ships could bring away. But time and change of circ.u.mstances have shifted the situation of this trade. The ships coming in great numbers from Holland, Denmark, Hamburgh, and other northern countries, all intruders upon the English, who were the first discoverers of Greenland, disturbed the whales, which gradually, as other fish often do, forsaking the place, were not to be killed so near the sh.o.r.e as before; but they are now found, and have been so ever since, in the openings and s.p.a.ces among the ice, where they have deep water, and where they go sometimes a great many leagues from the sh.o.r.e.

The whale fishery begins in May, and continues all June and July; but whether the ships have good or bad success, they must come away, and get clear of the ice by the end of August, so that in the month of September, at farthest, they may be expected home; but a ship that meets with a fortunate and early fishery in May, may return in June or July.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WHALE FISHERY.--Page 208.

The engraving represents the lancing of the whale, who has already been harpooned, and is in a dying state. In his last struggles he has broken one of the whalers' boats.]

The manner of taking whales at present is as follows: As soon as the fishermen hear the whale blow, they cry out, _Fall! fall!_ and every ship gets out its long-boat, in each of which there are six or seven men, who row till they become pretty near the whale; then the harpooner strikes it with the harpoon: this requires great dexterity, for through the bone of his head there is no striking, but near his spout there is a soft piece of flesh, into which the iron sinks with ease. As soon as he is struck, they take care to give him rope enough, otherwise, when he goes down, as he frequently does, he would inevitably sink the boat: this rope he draws with such violence, that, if it were not well watered, it would, by its friction against the sides of the boat, be soon set on fire. The line fastened to the harpoon is six or seven fathoms long, and is called the fore-runner; it is made of the finest and softest hemp, that it may slip the easier: to this they join a heap of lines of 90 or 100 fathoms each, and when there are not enough in one long-boat, they borrow from another.

The man at the helm observes which way the rope goes, and steers the boat accordingly, that it may run exactly out before; for the whale runs away with the line with so much rapidity, that he would overset the boat if it were not kept straight. When the whale is struck, the other long-boats row before, and observe which way the line stands, and sometimes pull it: if they feel it stiff, it is a sign the whale still pulls in strength; but if it hangs loose, and the boat lies equally high before and behind upon the water, they pull it in gently, but take care to coil it, that the whale may have it again easily, if he recovers strength: they take care, however, not to give him too much line, because he sometimes entangles it about a rock, and pulls out the harpoon. The fat whales do not sink as soon as dead, but the lean ones do, and come up some days afterwards. As long as they see whales, they lose no time in cutting up what they have taken, yet keep fishing for others: when they see no more, or have taken enough, they begin with taking off the fat and whiskers in the following manner. The whale being lashed alongside, they lay it on one side, and put two ropes, one at the head and the other in the place of the tail, (which, together with the fins, is struck off as soon as he is taken,) to keep those extremities above water. On the off-side of the whale are two boats, to receive the pieces of fat, utensils, and men, that might otherwise fall into the water on that side. These precautions being taken, three or four men, with irons at their feet to prevent slipping, get on the whale, and begin to cut out pieces of about three feet thick and eight long, which are hauled up at the capstan or windla.s.s. When the fat is all cut off, they cut off the whiskers of the upper jaw with an axe, previously lashing them together to keep them firm, which also facilitates the cutting, and prevents them from falling into the sea; when on board, five or six of them are bundled together, and properly stowed: and after all is got off, the carcase is turned adrift, and devoured by the bears, who are very fond of it. In proportion as the large pieces of fat are cut off, the rest of the crew are employed in slicing them smaller, and picking out all the lean. When this is prepared, they stow it under the deck, where it lies till the fat of all the whales is on board; then cutting it still smaller, they put it up in tubs in the hold, cramming them very full and close.

Nothing now remains but to sail homewards, where the fat is to be boiled, and melted down into train oil.

During the summer of 1821, an attempt was made to kill whales with Sir William Congreve's rockets. The trial was conducted by William Scoresby, Esq. who took out with him, on board of the Fame, in which he sailed, several rockets, by way of experiment. Success attended his expectation; and little doubt can remain, if they continue to be skilfully applied, that the danger attending the harpoon will be nearly done away; and, consequently, this valuable branch of commerce will be essentially benefited by the discovery.

We shall conclude this short sketch of some of the curiosities respecting fishes, with an account of THE KRAKEN.--This is a most amazingly large sea animal, said to be seemingly of a crab-like form; the credit of whose existence rests upon the evidence produced by Bishop Pontoppidan, in his Natural History of Norway.

"Our fishermen (says the author) unanimously and invariably affirm, that, when they are several miles from the land, particularly in the hot summer days, and, by their distance, and the bearings of some points of land, expect from eighty to a hundred fathoms depth, and do not find but from twenty to thirty,--and especially if they find a more than usual plenty of cod and ling,--they judge the kraken to be at the bottom: but if they find by their lines that the water in the same place still shallows on them, they know he is rising to the surface, and row off with the greatest expedition till they come into the usual soundings of the place; when, lying on their oars, in a few minutes the monster emerges, and shews himself sufficiently, though the whole body does not appear. Its back or upper part, which seems an English mile and a half in circ.u.mference, (some have affirmed, considerably more than this,) looks at first like a number of small islands, surrounded with something that floats like sea-weeds; at last several bright points of horns appear, which grow thicker the higher they emerge, and sometimes stand up as high and large as the masts of middle-sized vessels. In a short time it slowly sinks, which is thought as dangerous as its rising; as it causes such a swell and whirlpool as draws every thing down with it, like that of Maelstrom."

The Bishop justly regrets the omission of probably the only opportunity that ever has or may be presented of surveying it alive, or seeing it entire when dead. This, he informs us, once did occur, on the credit of the Rev. Mr. Frus, minister at Nordland, and vicar of the college for promoting Christian knowledge; who informed him, that in 1680, a kraken (perhaps a young and careless one, as they generally keep several leagues from land) came into the waters that run between the rocks and cliffs near Alstahong; where, in turning about, some of its long horns caught hold of some adjoining trees, which it might easily have torn up, but that it was also entangled in some clefts of the rocks, whence it could not extricate itself, but putrefied on the spot.

Our author has heard of no person destroyed by this monster; but he relates a report of the danger of two fishermen, who came upon a part of the water full of the creature's thick slimy excrements, (which he voids for some months, as he feeds for some other;) they immediately strove to row off, but were not quick enough in turning to save the boat from one of the kraken's horns, which so crushed the head of it, that it was with difficulty they saved their lives on the wreck, though the weather was perfectly calm, the monster never appearing at other times. His excrement is said to be attractive of other fish on which he feeds; which expedient was probably necessary, on account of his slow unwieldy motion, to his subsistence; as this slow motion again may be necessary to the security of ships of the greatest force and burden, which must be overwhelmed on encountering such an immense animal, if his velocity were equal to his weight; the Norwegians supposing, that if his arms, on which he moves, and with which he takes his food, were to lay hold of the largest man of war, they would pull it down to the bottom.

In confirmation of the reality of this animal, our learned author cites Debes's Description of Faroe, for the existence of certain islands, which suddenly appear and as suddenly vanish. Many seafaring people, he adds, give accounts of such, particularly in the North Sea; which their superst.i.tion has either attributed to the delusion of the Devil, or considered as inhabited by evil spirits. But our honest historian, who is not for wronging even the Devil himself, supposes such mistaken islands to be nothing but the kraken, called by some the _soe trolden_, or sea-mischief; in which opinion he was greatly confirmed by the following quotation of Dr. Hierne, a learned Swede, from Baron Grippenheilm; and which is certainly a very remarkable pa.s.sage, viz. "Among the rocks about Stockholm, there is sometimes seen a tract of land, which at other times disappears, and is seen again in another place. Buraeus has placed it as an island, in his map. The peasants, who call it _Gummars-ore_, say, that it is not always seen, and that it lies out in the open sea; but I could never find it. One Sunday, when I was out amongst the rocks, sounding the coast, it happened, that in one place I saw something like three points of land in the sea, which surprised me a little, and I thought I had inadvertently pa.s.sed them over before. Upon this, I called to a peasant, to inquire for Gummars-ore; but when he came, we could see nothing of it; upon which, the peasant said, all was well, and that this prognosticated a storm, or a great quant.i.ty of fish." To which our author subjoins, "Who cannot discover that this Gummars-ore, with its points and prognostications of fish, was the kraken, mistaken by Buraeus for an island, which may keep itself about that spot where he rises?" He takes the kraken, doubtless, from his numerous tentaculi, which serve him as feet, to be of the polypus kind; and the contemplation of its enormous bulk led him to adapt a pa.s.sage from Ecclesiasticus, xliii. 31, 32. to it.

Whether by it may be intended the "dragon that is in the sea," mentioned Isaiah xxvii. 1. we refer to the conjecture of the reader.

After paying but a just respect to the moral character, the reverend function, and diligent investigations, of our author, we must admit the possibility of its existence, as it implies no contradiction; though it seems to encounter a general prepossession of the whale's being the largest animal on or in our globe, and the eradication of any long prepossession is attended with something irksome to us. But were we to suppose a salmon or a sturgeon the largest fish any number of persons had seen or heard of, and the whale had discovered himself as seldom, and but in part, as the kraken, it is easy to conceive that the existence of the whale had been as indigestible to such persons then, as that of the kraken may be to others now.

Some may incline to think such an extensive monster would encroach on the symmetry of nature, and would be over proportionate to the size of the globe itself; as a little calculation will inform us, that the breadth of what is seen of him, supposing him nearly round, must be full 2600 feet, (if more oval, or crab-like, full 2000 feet,) and his thickness, which may rather be called alt.i.tude, at least 300 feet; our author declaring he has chosen the least circ.u.mference mentioned of this animal, for the greater certainty. These vast dimensions, nevertheless, we apprehend will not argue conclusively against the existence of the animal, though considerably against a numerous increase or propagation of it. In fact, the great scarcity of the kraken, his confinement to the North Sea, and perhaps to equal lat.i.tudes in the south; the small number propagated by the whale, which is viviparous; and by the largest land animals, of which the elephant is said to go nearly two years with young; all induce us to conclude, from a.n.a.logy, that this creature is not numerous; which coincides with a pa.s.sage in a ma.n.u.script ascribed to Svere, king of Norway, and it is cited by Ol. Wormius, in his Museum, p. 280, in Latin, which we shall exactly translate:--

"There remains one kind, which they call hasgufe, whose magnitude is unknown, as it is seldom seen. Those who affirm they have seen its body, declare, it is more like an island than a beast, and that its carcase was never found; whence some imagine that there are but two of the kind in nature."

Whether the vanishing island Lemair, of which captain Rodney went in search, was a kraken, we submit to the fancy of our readers. In fine, if the existence of the creature is admitted, it will seem a fair inference, that he is the scarcest as well as the largest in our world; and that if there are larger in the universe, they probably inhabit some sphere or planet more extended than our own, and such we have no pretence to limit; but that fiction can devise a much greater than this, is evident from the c.o.c.k of Mahomet, and the whale in the Bava Bathra of the Talmud, which were intended to be credited; and to either of which, our kraken is a very shrimp in dimensions.

We conclude this account in the words of Goldsmith: "To believe all that has been said of these animals, would be too credulous; and to reject the possibility of their existence, would be a presumption unbecoming mankind."