413 
THE WHITE WHALE 
every Low Dutch harpooneer in that ancient Greenland and Spitzbergen 
whale fishery. In the first place, the amount of butter, and Texel and 
Leyden cheese consumed, seems amazing. I impute it, though, to 
their naturally unctuous natures, being rendered still more unctuous 
by the nature of their vocation, and especially by their pursuing their 
game in those frigid Polar Seas, on the very coasts of that Esquimaux 
country where the convivial natives pledge each other in bumpers of 
train oil. 
The quantity of beer, too, is very large, 10,800 barrels. How, as 
those polar fisheries could only be prosecuted in the short summer of 
that climate, so that the whole cruise of one of these Dutch whalemen, 
including the short voyage to and from the Spitzbergen sea, did not 
much exceed three months, say, and reckoning 30 men to each of their 
fleet of 180 sail, we have 5,400 Low Dutch seamen in all; therefore, I 
say, we have precisely two barrels of beer per man, for a twelve weeks’ 
allowance, exclusive of his fair proportion of that 550 ankers of gin. 
How, whether these gin and beer harpooneers — so fuddled as one might 
fancy them to have been — were the right sort of men to stand up in a 
boat’s head, and take good aim at flying whales ; this would seem some- 
what improbable. Yet they did aim at them, and hit them too. But 
this was very far Horth, be it remembered, where beer agrees well with 
the constitution. Upon the Equator, in our southern fishery, beer 
would be apt to make the harpooneer sleepy at the masthead and boozy 
in his boat; and grievous loss might ensue to Hantucket and Hew 
Bedford. 
But no more; enough has been said to show that the old Dutch 
whalers of two or three centuries ago were high livers; and that the 
English whalers have not neglected so excellent an example. For, say 
they, when cruising in an empty ship, if you can get nothing better 
out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least. And this 
empties the decanter. 
