3 
THE WHITE WHALE 
when for scores on scores of miles yon wade knee-deep among Tiger- 
lilies — what is the one charm wanting? — Water — there is not a drop 
of water there ! Were Niagara bnt a cataract of sand, would you travel 
your thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, 
upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to 
buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedes- 
trian trip to Rockaway Beach ? Why is almost every robust boy with a 
robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea ? 
Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a 
mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now 
out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? 
Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? 
Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning 
of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tor- 
menting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was 
drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and 
oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this 
is the key to it all. 
Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever 
I begin to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over-conscious of 
my lungs, I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a 
passenger. For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and 
a purse is but a rag unless you have something in it. Besides, pas- 
sengers get seasick — grow quarrelsome — don’t sleep of nights — do not 
enjoy themselves much, as a general thing; — no, I never go as a passen- 
ger; nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a 
commodore, or a captain, or a cook. I abandon the glory and distinc- 
tion of such offices to those who like them. For my part, I abominate 
all honourable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind 
whatsoever. It is quite as much as I can do to take care of myself, 
without taking care of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and what not. 
And as for going as cook, — though I confess there is considerable glory 
in that, a cook being a sort of officer on shipboard — yet, somehow, I 
never fancied broiling fowls; — though once broiled, judiciously but- 
tered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who will 
speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than 
I will. It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians upon 
