29 
THE WHITE WHALE 
all Water Street and Wapping. In these last-mentioned haunts you 
see only sailors; but in New Bedford, actual cannibals stand chatting 
at street corners; savages outright; many of whom yet carry on their 
bones unholy flesh. It makes a stranger stare. 
But, besides the Feejeeans, Tongatabooars, Erromangoans, Pannan- 
gians, and Brighgians, and, besides the wild specimens of the whaling- 
craft which unheeded reel about the streets, you will see other sights 
still more curious, certainly more comical. There weekly arrive in this 
town scores of green Vermonters and New Hampshire men, all athirst 
for gain and glory in the fishery. They are mostly young, of stalwart 
frames; fellows who have felled forests, and now seek to drop the axe 
and snatch the whale-lance. Many are as green as the Green Moun- 
tains whence they came. In some things you would think them hut a 
few hours old. Look there ! that chap strutting round the comer. He 
wears a heaver hat and swallow-tailed coat, girdled with a sailor-belt 
and sheath-knife. Here comes another with a sou’-wester and a bom- 
bazine cloak. 
No town-bred dandy will compare with a country-bred one — I mean 
a downright bumpkin dandy — a fellow that, in the dog-days, will mow 
his two acres in buckskin gloves for fear of tanning his hands. Now 
when a country dandy like this takes it into his head to make a dis- 
tinguished reputation, and joins the great whale-fishery, you should 
see the comical things he does upon reaching the seaport. In bespeak- 
ing his sea-outfit, he orders bell-buttons to his waistcoats ; straps to his 
canvas trousers. Ah poor Hay-seed! how bitterly will hurst those 
straps in the first howling gale, when thou art driven, straps, buttons, 
and all, down the throat of the tempest. 
But think not that this famous town has only harpooneers, cannibals, 
and bumpkins to show her visitors. Not at all. Still New Bedford 
is a queer place. Had it not been for us whalemen, that tract of land 
would this day perhaps have been in as howling condition as the coast 
of Labrador. As it is, parts of her back country are enough to frighten 
one, they look so bony. The town itself is perhaps the dearest place 
to live in, in all New England. It is a land of oil, true enough: but 
not like Canaan; a land, also, of corn and wine. The streets do not 
run with milk; nor in the spring-time do they pave them with fresh 
eggs. Yet, in spite of this, nowhere in all America will you find more 
