THE WHITE WHALE 
99 
policy of the Spanish Crown, touching those colonies; and, if space 
permitted, it might be distinctly shown how from those whalemen at 
last eventuated the liberation of Peru, Chili, and Bolivia from the 
yoke of Old Spain, and the establishment of the eternal democracy in 
those parts. 
That great America on the other side of the sphere, Australia, was 
given to the enlightened world by the whalemen. After its first blun- 
der-born discovery by a Dutchman, all other ships long shunned those 
shores as pestiferously barbarous; but the whale ship touched there. 
The whale ship is the true mother of that now mighty colony. More- 
over, in the infancy of the first Australian settlement, the emigrants 
were several times saved from starvation by the benevolent biscuit of 
the whale ship luckily dropping an anchor in their waters. The un- 
counted isles of all Polynesia confess the same truth, and do com- 
mercial homage to the whale ship, that cleared the way for the mission- 
ary and the merchant, and in many cases carried the primitive mission- 
aries to their first destinations. If that double-bolted land, Japan, 
is ever to become hospitable, it is the whale ship alone to whom the 
credit will be due ; for already she is on the threshold. 
But if, in the face of all this, you still declare that whaling has no 
sesthetically noble associations connected with it, then am I ready to 
shiver fifty lances with you there, and unhorse you with a split helmet 
every time. 
“The whale has no famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler,” 
you will say. 
The whale no famous author , and whaling no famous chronicler? 
Who wrote the first account of our Leviathan? Who but mighty 
Job! And who composed the first narrative of a whaling voyage? 
Who, but no less a prince than Alfred the Great, who, with his own 
royal pen, took down the words from Other, the Norwegian whale- 
hunter of those times ! And who pronounced our glowing eulogy in 
Parliament ? Who, but Edmund Burke ! 
“True enough, but then whalemen themselves are poor devils; they 
have no good blood in their veins.” 
No good Mood in their veins? They have something better than 
royal blood there. The grandmother of Benjamin Franklin was Mary 
Morrel ; afterwards, by marriage, Mary Folger, one of the old settlers 
