378 
MOBY DICK; OR 
CHAPTER XCI 
AMBERGRIS 
Now tHis ambergris is a very curious substance, and so important as 
an article of commerce, that in 1791 a certain Nantucket-born Captain 
Coffin was examined at the bar of the English House of Commons on 
that subject. Eor at that time, and indeed until a comparatively late 
day, the precise origin of ambergris remained, like amber itself, a prob- 
lem to the learned. Though the word ambergris is but the French 
compound for grey amber, yet the two substances are quite distinct. 
For amber, though at times found on the sea-coast, is also dug up in 
some far inland soils, whereas ambergris is never found except upon 
the sea. Besides, amber is a hard, transparent, brittle, odourless 
substance, used for mouthpieces to pipes, for beads and ornaments ; but 
ambergris is soft, waxy, and so highly fragrant and spicy, that it 
is largely used in perfumery, in pastilles, precious candles, hair pow- 
ders, and pomatum. The Turks use it in cooking, and also carry it to 
Mecca, for the same purpose that frankincense is carried to St. Peter’s, 
in Rome. Some wine merchants drop a few grains into claret, to 
flavour it. 
Who would think, then, that such fine ladies and gentlemen should 
regale themselves with an essence found in the inglorious bowels of a 
sick whale ! Yet so it is. By some, ambergris is supposed to be the 
cause, and by others the effect, of the dyspepsia in the whale. How to 
cure such a dyspepsia it were hard to say, unless by administering three 
or four boat-loads of Brandreth’s pills, and then running out of harm’s 
way, as labourers do in blasting rocks. 
I have forgotten to say that there were found in this ambergris, cer- 
tain hard, round, bony plates which at first Stubb thought might be 
sailors’ trouser buttons; but it afterwards turned out that they were 
nothing more than pieces of small squid bones embalmed in that 
manner. 
Now that the incorruption of this most fragrant ambergris should be 
found in the heart of such decay; is this nothing? Bethink thee of 
that saying of St. Paul in Corinthians, about corruption and incorrup- 
tion; how that we are sown in dishonour, but raised in glory. And 
