204 THE WHALE AND 



Matter for the Dictionary. Divers kinds of Muxing. 



there is no work to do, are laid aside now. The 

 cooper's driver is merry a-going on the great 

 oil casks; the decks are cluttered, and full of 

 gurry and dirt ; and every body and every thing 

 is besmeared with oil, and will be so until a 

 strong ley they make from the ashes of the 

 scraps has washed all clean. 



It is almost worth taking one cruise in a 

 whale ship to see how they capture and dis- 

 pose of their gigantic game, and to learn some 

 odd things a man can never know otherwise. 

 Had Noah Webster ever gone a whaling, he 

 would have been able to add some five or six 

 notable and genuine English words to his Dic- 

 tionary, which may never be known off salt 

 water unless we record them here. 



Mux and skimshander are the general names 

 by which they express the ways in which whale- 

 men busy themselves when making passages, 

 and in the intervals of taking whales, in work- 

 ing up sperm whales' jaws and teeth and right 

 whale bone into boxes, swifts, reels, canes, 

 whips, folders, stamps, and all sorts of things, 

 according to their ingenuity. 



Gurry is the term by which they call the 

 combined water, oil, and dirt that " cutting in" 



