THE WHITE WHALE 533 
“If you should write a fable for little fishes, you would make them 
speak like great whales.” Goldsmith to Johnson . 
“In the afternoon we saw what was supposed to be a rock, but it was 
found to be a dead whale, which some Asiatics had killed, and were then 
towing ashore. They seemed to endeavour to conceal themselves behind 
the whale, in older to avoid being seen by us.” Cook’s Voyages. 
“The larger whales, they seldom venture to attack. They stand in so 
great dread of some of them, that when out at sea they are afraid to men- 
tion even their names, and carry dung, limestone, juniper-wood, and some 
other articles of the same nature in their boats, in order to terrify and 
prevent their too near approach.” 
Uno Von Troil’s Letters on Banks’s and 
SolamdePs Voyage to Iceland in 1772. 
“The Spermacetti Whale found by the Nantuckois, is an active, fierce 
animal, and requires vast address and boldness in the fishermen.” 
Thomas Jefferson’s Whale Memorial to the 
French Minister in 1778. 
“And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it?” 
Edmund Burke’s Reference in Parliament 
to the Nantucket Whale Fishery. 
“Spain a great whale stranded on the shores of Europe.” 
Edmund Burke ( somewhere ). 
“A tenth branch of the king’s ordinary revenue, said to be grounded 
on the consideration of his guarding and protecting the seas from pirates 
and robbers, is the right to royal fish, which are whale and sturgeon. And 
these, when either thrown ashore or caught near the coast, are the property 
of the king.” 
Blackstone. 
“Soon to the sport of death the crews repair : 
Rodmond unerring o’er his head suspends 
The barbed steel, and every turn attends.” 
Falconer’s Shipwreck, 
“Bright shone the roofs, the domes, the spires, 
And rockets blew self driven, 
