426 MOBY DICK; OR 
Sperm Whale for forty-eight months think they have done extremely 
well, and thank God, if at last they carry home the oil of forty fish. 
Whereas, in the days of the old Canadian and Indian hunters and 
trappers of the West, when the far west (in whose sunset suns still 
rise) was a wilderness and a virgin, the same number of moccasined 
men, for the same number of months, mounted on horses instead of 
sailing in ships, would have slain not forty, hut forty thousand and 
more buffaloes; a fact that, if need were, could be statistically stated. 
Nor, considered aright, does it seem any argument in favour of the 
gradual extinction of the Sperm Whale, for example, that in former 
years (the latter part of the last century, say) these Leviathans, in 
small pods were encountered much oftener than at present, and, in con- 
sequence, the voyages were not so prolonged, and were also much more 
remunerative. Because, as has been elsewhere noticed, those whales, 
influenced by some views to safety, now swim the seas in immense 
caravans, so that to a large degree the scattered solitaries, yokes, and 
pods, and schools of other days are now aggregated into vast but widely 
separated, unfrequent armies. That is all. And equally fallacious 
seems the conceit, that because the so-called whale-bone whales no 
longer haunt many grounds in former years abounding with them, 
hence that species also is declining. For they are only being driven 
from promontory to cape ; and if one coast is no longer enlivened with 
their jets, then, be sure, some other and remoter strand has been very 
recently startled by the unfamiliar spectacle. 
Furthermore : concerning these last mentioned Leviathans, they have 
two firm fortresses, which, in all human probability, will for ever re- 
main impregnable. And as upon the invasion of their valleys, the 
frosty Swiss have retreated to their mountains; so, hunted from the 
savannas and glades of the middle seas, the whale-bone whales can at 
last resort to their Polar citadels, and diving under the ultimate 
glassy barriers and walls there, come up among icy fields and floes ; and 
in a charmed circle of everlasting December, bid defiance to all pursuit 
from man. 
But as perhaps fifty of these whale-bone whales are harpooned for 
one cachalot, some philosophers of the forecastle have concluded that 
this positive havoc has already very seriously diminished their battal- 
ions. But though for some time past a number of these whales, not 
