CHAPTER 1 Loomings Call me Ishmael .
Some years ago -- never mind how long precisely -- having little or no money in my purse , and nothing particular to interest me on shore , I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world .
It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation .
Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth ; whenever it is a damp , drizzly November in my soul ; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses , and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet ; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me , that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street , and methodically knocking people 's hats off -- then , I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can .
This is my substitute for pistol and ball .
With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword ; I quietly take to the ship .
There is nothing surprising in this .
If they but knew it , almost all men in their degree , some time or other , cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me .
There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes , belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs -- commerce surrounds it with her surf .
Right and left , the streets take you waterward .
Its extreme downtown is the battery , where that noble mole is washed by waves , and cooled by breezes , which a few hours previous were out of sight of land .
Look at the crowds of water-gazers there .
Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon .
Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip , and from thence , by Whitehall , northward .
What do you see ?
-- Posted like silent sentinels all around the town , stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries .
Some leaning against the spiles ; some seated upon the pier-heads ; some looking over the bulwarks glasses !
of ships from China ; some high aloft in the rigging , as if striving to get a still better seaward peep .
But these are all landsmen ; of week days pent up in lath and plaster -- tied to counters , nailed to benches , clinched to desks .
How then is this ?
Are the green fields gone ?
What do they here ?
But look !
here come more crowds , pacing straight for the water , and seemingly bound for a dive .
Strange !
Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land ; loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice .
No .
They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in .
And there they stand -- miles of them -- leagues .
Inlanders all , they come from lanes and alleys , streets and avenues , -- north , east , south , and west .
Yet here they all unite .
Tell me , does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all those ships attract them thither ?
Once more .
Say you are in the country ; in some high land of lakes .
Take almost any path you please , and ten to one it carries you down in a dale , and leaves you there by a pool in the stream .
There is magic in it .
Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries -- stand that man on his legs , set his feet a-going , and he will infallibly lead you to water , if water there be in all that region .
Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert , try this experiment , if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor .
Yes , as every one knows , meditation and water are wedded for ever .
But here is an artist .
He desires to paint you the dreamiest , shadiest , quietest , most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of the Saco .
What is the chief element he employs ?
There stand his trees , each with a hollow trunk , as if a hermit and a crucifix were within ; and here sleeps his meadow , and there sleep his cattle ; and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke .
Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way , reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue .
But though the picture lies thus tranced , and though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd 's head , yet all were vain , unless the shepherd 's eye were fixed upon the magic stream before him .
Go visit the Prairies in June , when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among Tiger-lilies -- what is the one charm wanting ?
-- Water there is not a drop of water there !
Were Niagara but a cataract of sand , would you travel your thousand miles to see it ?
Why did the poor poet of Tennessee , upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver , deliberate whether to buy him a coat , which he sadly needed , or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach ?
Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him , at some time or other crazy to go to sea ?
Why upon your first voyage as a passenger , did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration , when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land ?
Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy ?
Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity , and own brother of Jove ?
Surely all this is not without meaning .
And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus , who because he could not grasp the tormenting , mild image he saw in the fountain , plunged into it and was drowned .
But that same image , we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans .
It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life ; and this is the key to it all .
Now , when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin to grow hazy about the eyes , and begin to be over conscious of my lungs , I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger .
For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse , and a purse is but a rag unless you have something in it .
Besides , passengers get sea-sick -- grow quarrelsome -- do n't sleep of nights -- do not enjoy themselves much , as a general thing ; -- no , I never go as a passenger ; nor , though I am something of a salt , do I ever go to sea as a Commodore , or a Captain , or a Cook .
I abandon the glory and distinction of such offices to those who like them .
For my part , I abominate all honorable respectable toils , trials , and tribulations of every kind whatsoever .
It is quite as much as I can do to take care of myself , without taking care of ships , barques , brigs , schooners , and what not .
And as for going as cook , -- though I confess there is considerable glory in that , a cook being a sort of officer on ship-board -- yet , somehow , I never fancied broiling fowls ; -- though once broiled , judiciously buttered , and judgmatically salted and peppered , there is no one who will speak more respectfully , not to say reverentially , of a broiled fowl than I will .
It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse , that you see the mummies of those creatures in their huge bakehouses the pyramids .
No , when I go to sea , I go as a simple sailor , right before the mast , plumb down into the fore-castle , aloft there to the royal mast-head .
True , they rather order me about some , and make me jump from spar to spar , like a grasshopper in a May meadow .
And at first , this sort of thing is unpleasant enough .
It touches one 's sense of honor , particularly if you come of an old established family in the land , the Van Rensselaers , or Randolphs , or Hardicanutes .
And more than all , if just previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot , you have been lording it as a country schoolmaster , making the tallest boys stand in awe of you .
The transition is a keen one , I assure you , from a schoolmaster to a sailor , and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it .
But even this wears off in time .
What of it , if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom and sweep down the decks ?
What does that indignity amount to , weighed , I mean , in the scales of the New Testament ?
Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me , because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance ?
Who ai n't a slave ?
Tell me that .
Well , then , however the old sea-captains may order me about -- however they may thump and punch me about , I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right ; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way -- either in a physical or metaphysical point of view , that is ; and so the universal thump is passed round , and all hands should rub each other 's shoulder-blades , and be content .
Again , I always go to sea as a sailor , because they make a point of paying me for my trouble , whereas they never pay passengers a single penny that I ever heard of .
On the contrary , passengers themselves must pay .
And there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid .
The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us .
But being paid , -- what will compare with it ?
The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous , considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills , and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven .
Ah !
how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition !
Finally , I always go to sea as a sailor , because of the wholesome exercise and pure air of the fore-castle deck .
For as in this world , head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern ( that is , if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim ) , so for the most part the Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the forecastle .
He thinks he breathes it first ; but not so .
In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many other things , at the same time that the leaders little suspect it .
But wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as a merchant sailor , I should now take it into my head to go on a whaling voyage ; this the invisible police officer of the Fates , who has the constant surveillance of me , and secretly dogs me , and influences me in some unaccountable way -- he can better answer than any one else .
And , doubtless , my going on this whaling voyage , formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago .
It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances .
I take it that this part of the bill must have run something like this :