"In 40 degrees south, we saw Spermacetti Whales, but did not take any till the first of May, the sea being then covered with them."
Colnett's Voyage for the Purpose of Extending the Spermacetti Whale Finery.
"In the free element beneath me swam,
Floundered and dived, in play, in chace, in battle,
Fishes of every color, form, and kind;
Which language cannot paint, and mariner
Had never seen; from dread Leviathan
To insect millions peopling every wave:
Gather'd in shoals immense, like floating islands,
Led by mysterious instincts through that waste
And trackless region, though on every side
Assaulted by voracious enemies,
Whales, sharks, and monsters, arm'd in front or jaw.
With swords, saws, spiral horns, or hooked fangs."
Montgomery's World before the Flood.
"Io! Pæan! Io! sing,
To the finny people's king.
Not a mightier whale than this
In the vast Atlantic is;
Not a fatter fish than he,
Flounders round the Polar Sea."
Charles Lamb's Triumph of the Whale.
"In the year 1690 some persons were on a high hill observing the whales spouting and sporting with each other, when
one observed; there—pointing to the sea—is a green pasture
where our children's grand-children will go for bread."
Obed Macy's History of Nantucket.
"I built a cottage for Susan and myself and made a gateway in the form of a Gothic Arch, by setting up a whale's jaw bones." Hawthorne's Twice Told Tales.
"She came to bespeak a monument for her first love, who had been killed by a whale in the Pacific ocean, no less than forty years ago." Ibid.
