264 FOLLOW THE WHALE 



an economic necessity; was it an excess of adventurousness; or was it 

 simply inborn? The answer seems to be none of these. 



Although America needed oil desperately at that period and was 

 willing to pay handsomely for it, she did not offer anything like high 

 enough individual returns to induce young men to leave an enormous, 

 limitless, almost virgin field of profitable agriculture, mining, trade, 

 and industry to risk their lives chasing whales in the tropics; yet the 

 young men went to sea in droves. What is more, Americans had 

 ample opportunity for adventure right in their own back yards and 

 had just been through a devastating and vicious war, while they still 

 had a whole continent to open up and explore. Gallivanting about 

 on vermin-infested ships in climates they manifestly loathed, and to 

 which they could not accustom themselves, was quite unnecessary. 

 That they were inborn sailors need hardly be considered, despite the 

 foibles of modern New Englanders, for the majority of the North- 

 eastern colonists were landsmen and of Anglo-Saxon origin. They 

 hated and distrusted the sea and usually had to be press-ganged into 

 going upon it at the best of times. 



The answer to this question is no clearer than that offered for the 

 behavior of the sperm whale. Perhaps Melville came closer to ex- 

 plaining both in his famous tale Moby Dick, wherein men just went 

 to sea by mistake and the whales kept bobbing up in odd places for 

 no apparent rhyme or reason. 



