Abridged Text, followed by Abridger Notes, followed by multimedia, followed by Original Text with deletions.

 

Chapter 14 Nantucket

 

Nantucket! Take out your map and look at it—a mere hillock, and elbow of sand; all beach, without a background. There is more sand there than you would use in twenty years as a substitute for blotting paper. Some gamesome wights will tell you that they have to plant weeds there, they don’t grow naturally; that they import Canada thistles; that they have to send beyond seas for a spile to stop a leak in an oil cask; that pieces of wood in Nantucket are carried about like bits of the true cross in Rome; that people there plant toadstools before their houses, to get under the shade in summer time; that one blade of grass makes an oasis, three blades in a day’s walk a prairie; that they wear quicksand shoes, something like Laplander snow-shoes; that they are so shut up, belted about, every way inclosed, surrounded, and made an utter island of by the ocean, that to their very chairs and tables small clams will sometimes be found adhering, as to the backs of sea turtles. But these extravaganzas only show that Nantucket is no Illinois.

 

Look now of how this island was settled by the red-men. Setting out in their canoes, after a perilous passage they discovered the island. These Nantucketers first caught crabs and quohogs in the sand; grown bolder, they waded out with nets for mackerel; more experienced, they pushed off in boats and captured cod; and at last, declared everlasting war with the mightiest animated mass that has survived the flood! That Himmalehan, salt-sea Mastodon, clothed with such portentousness of unconscious power, that his very panics are more to be dreaded than his most fearless and malicious assaults!

 

And thus have these naked Nantucketers, these sea hermits, issuing from their ant-hill in the sea, overrun and conquered the watery world like so many Alexanders. The Nantucketer, he alone resides and riots on the sea; he alone goes down to it in ships; to and fro ploughing it as his own special plantation. There is his home; there lies his business, which a Noah’s flood would not interrupt. For years he knows not the land; so that when he comes to it at last, it smells like another world, more strangely than the moon would to an Earthsman.

 

Link to Chapter 15 Chowder.

 

Abridger Notes

 

The chapter describes both the island of Nantucket, and Nantucketers. On the former, its known that Melville had never visited Nantucket until after the publication of Moby Dick. An interesting and informative article on Melville’s sources that informed his Nantucket descriptions is posted by the Nantucket Historical Association. The article also describes something of the detective work that goes into identifying, or at least educated guessing, at Melville’s precise sources, even for particular passages. It speaks of patient scholarship.

 

Regarding the actual abridgement decisions. I excluded a legend on the Indians (redmen) first settling Nantucket as the result of a baby being carried off by an eagle. From what I have read, death at the talons and hooked, raptorial beak of an eagle would be truly terrible and I don’t want to read it over and over. And I don’t think that there is need for a legend to explain why humans explore, making a “perilous” journey, to find and inhabit new lands, in this case Nantucket.  They just do.

 

I thought about excluding Native American settlement entirely (its little addressed in Coffin’s history, below, for example), and some of the expansive language about Nantucketers overrunning and conquering “the watery world like so many Alexanders” clearly applies to the later European-descended settlers, not Native Americans, but with qualifiers throughout such as “THESE Nantucketers” and “these naked Nantucketers,” Melville leaves it ambiguous as to when his intent is to bind "Nantucketer" to Native Americans, and when that transitions to referencing English descendants. Perhaps he intends that ambiguity, so that marriage to the island and the sea is the primary thing that defines the ancestral line.

 

“…What wonder, then, that these Nantucketers, born on a beach, should take to the sea for a livelihood! They first caught crabs and quohogs in the sand; grown bolder, they waded out with nets for mackerel; more experienced, they pushed off in boats and captured cod; and at last, launching a navy of great ships on the sea, explored this watery world; put an incessant belt of circumnavigations round it; peeped in at Bhering’s Straits; and in all seasons and all oceans declared everlasting war with the mightiest animated mass that has survived the flood; most monstrous and most mountainous! That Himmalehan, salt-sea Mastodon, clothed with such portentousness of unconscious power, that his very panics are more to be dreaded than his most fearless and malicious assaults!”

 

è è è

 

“These Nantucketers first caught crabs and quohogs in the sand; grown bolder, they waded out with nets for mackerel; more experienced, they pushed off in boats and captured cod; and at last declared everlasting war with the mightiest animated mass that survived the flood! That Himmalehan, salt-sea Mastodon, clothed with such portentousness of unconscious power, that his very panics are more to be dreaded than his most fearless and malicious assaults!””

 

And in the next paragraph

 

“And thus have these naked Nantucketers, these sea hermits, issuing from their ant-hill in the sea, overrun and conquered the watery world like so many Alexanders; …”

 

In any case, it’s a novel, and I liked the acknowledgement that Indians were the first to settle (and Coffin seems to affirm this), but I don’t know enough at this point to affirm anything else.

 

Generally, Melville’s detailed descriptions are important in mid 19th century, when it’s undoubtedly the case that few people had seen whales, and a whole lot else for that matter. – I wonder how Melville descriptions would have adapted to an availability of photographs, film, and other multimedia?

 

Multimedia Chapter 14 Nantucket

 

History of Nantucket by W. Coffin.

Google Maps of Nantucket Island.

 

 

Original Chapter 14 Nantucket with Deletions

 

Nothing more happened on the passage worthy the mentioning; so, after a fine run, we safely arrived in Nantucket.

 

Nantucket! Take out your map and look at it. See what a real corner of the world it occupies; how it stands there, away off shore, more lonely than the Eddystone lighthouse. Look at it—a mere hillock, and elbow of sand; all beach, without a background. There is more sand there than you would use in twenty years as a substitute for blotting paper. Some gamesome wights will tell you that they have to plant weeds there, they don’t grow naturally; that they import Canada thistles; that they have to send beyond seas for a spile to stop a leak in an oil cask; that pieces of wood in Nantucket are carried about like bits of the true cross in Rome; that people there plant toadstools before their houses, to get under the shade in summer time; that one blade of grass makes an oasis, three blades in a day’s walk a prairie; that they wear quicksand shoes, something like Laplander snow-shoes; that they are so shut up, belted about, every way inclosed, surrounded, and made an utter island of by the ocean, that to their very chairs and tables small clams will sometimes be found adhering, as to the backs of sea turtles. But these extravaganzas only show that Nantucket is no Illinois.

 

Look now at the wondrous traditional story of how this island was settled by the red-men. Thus goes the legend. In olden times an eagle swooped down upon the New England coast, and carried off an infant Indian in his talons. With loud lament the parents saw their child borne out of sight over the wide waters. They resolved to follow in the same direction. Setting out in their canoes, after a perilous passage they discovered the island, and there they found an empty ivory casket,—the poor little Indian’s skeleton.

 

What wonder, then, that these Nantucketers, born on a beach, should take to the sea for a livelihood! They first caught crabs and quohogs in the sand; grown bolder, they waded out with nets for mackerel; more experienced, they pushed off in boats and captured cod; and at last, launching a navy of great ships on the sea, explored this watery world; put an incessant belt of circumnavigations round it; peeped in at Bhering’s Straits; and in all seasons and all oceans declared everlasting war with the mightiest animated mass that has survived the flood; most monstrous and most mountainous! That Himmalehan, salt-sea Mastodon, clothed with such portentousness of unconscious power, that his very panics are more to be dreaded than his most fearless and malicious assaults!

 

And thus have these naked Nantucketers, these sea hermits, issuing from their ant-hill in the sea, overrun and conquered the watery world like so many Alexanders; parcelling out among them the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans, as the three pirate powers did Poland. Let America add Mexico to Texas, and pile Cuba upon Canada; let the English overswarm all India, and hang out their blazing banner from the sun; two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer’s. For the sea is his; he owns it, as Emperors own empires; other seamen having but a right of way through it. Merchant ships are but extension bridges; armed ones but floating forts; even pirates and privateers, though following the sea as highwaymen the road, they but plunder other ships, other fragments of the land like themselves, without seeking to draw their living from the bottomless deep itself. The Nantucketer, he alone resides and riots on the sea; he alone, in Bible language, goes down to it in ships; to and fro ploughing it as his own special plantation. There is his home; there lies his business, which a Noah’s flood would not interrupt, though it overwhelmed all the millions in China. He lives on the sea, as prairie cocks in the prairie; he hides among the waves, he climbs them as chamois hunters climb the Alps. For years he knows not the land; so that when he comes to it at last, it smells like another world, more strangely than the moon would to an Earthsman. With the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales.