412 
MOBY DICK; OR 
knew must be about whalers. The title was, Dan Coopman, where- 
fore I concluded that this must be the invaluable memoirs of some 
Amsterdam cooper in the fishery, as every whale ship must carry its 
cooper. I was reinforced in this opinion by seeing that it was the 
production of one “Fitz Swackhammer.” But my friend Dr. Snod- 
head, a very learned man, professor of Low Dutch and High German 
in the college of Santa Claus and St. Pott’s, to whom I handed the 
work for translation, giving him a box of sperm candles for his trouble 
— this same Dr. Snodhead, so soon as he spied the book, assured me 
that “Dan Coopman” did not mean “The Cooper,” but “The Mer- 
chant.” In short, this ancient and learned Low Dutch book treated 
of the commerce of Holland; and, among other subjects, contained a 
very interesting account of its whale fishery. And in this chapter 
it was, headed “Smeer,” or “Fat,” that I found a long detailed list 
of the outfits for the larders and cellars of 180 sail of Dutch whale- 
men; from which list, as translated by Dr. Snodhead, I transcribed 
the following : 
400.000 lbs. of beef. 
60.000 lbs. Friesland pork. 
150.000 lbs. of stock fish. 
550.000 lbs. of biscuit. 
12.000 lbs. of soft bread. 
2,800 firkins of butter. 
20.000 lbs. Texel and Leyden cheese. 
144.000 lbs. cheese (probably an inferior article). 
550 ankers of Geneva. 
10,800 barrels of beer. 
Most statistical tables are parchingly dry in the reading; not so in 
the present case, however, where the reader is flooded with whole pipes, 
barrels, quarts, and gills of good gin and good cheer. 
At the time, I devoted three days to the studious digesting of all this 
beer, beef, and bread, during which many profound thoughts were in- 
cidentally suggested to me, capable of a transcendental and Platonic ap- 
plication; and, furthermore, I compiled supplementary tables of my 
own, touching the probable quantity of stock-fish, etc., consumed by 
