2 
MOBY DICK; OR 
ward. What do you see? — Posted like silent sentinels all around the 
town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean rev- 
eries. Some leaning against the piles ; some seated upon the pier-heads ; 
some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft 
in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But 
these are all landsmen ; of week days pent up in lath and plaster — tied 
to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this ? 
Are the green fields gone ? What do they here ? 
But look ! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and 
seemingly hound for a dive. Strange ! Nothing will content them but 
the extremest limit of the land ; loitering under the shady lee of yonder 
warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water 
as they possibly can without falling in. And there they stand — miles 
of them — leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, 
streets and avenues — north, east, south, and west-. Yet here they all 
unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the com- 
passes of all those ships attract them thither? 
Once more. Say, you are in the country ; in some high land of lakes. 
Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down 
in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic 
in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest 
reveries — stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will 
infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should 
you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, 
if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. 
Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever. 
But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadi- 
est, quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the 
valley of the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There 
stand his trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix 
were within; and here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle; 
and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant 
woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of moun- 
tains bathed in their hill-side blue. But though the picture lies thus 
tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon 
this shepherd’s head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd’s eye were 
fixed upon the magic stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in June, 
