Moby-Dick (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (99 page)

Benedict Arnold (1741-1801) energetically in battle at Saratoga in 1777.

Narrow strait connecting the Aegean Sea and the Sea of Marmora, between European and Asian Turkey.

Good health and a solid constitution (French).

Early form of the Turkish title
Pasha
; here, a haughty and imperious creature

A seducer; a character in Nicolas Rowe’s play
The Fair Penitent
(1703).

Eugène François Vidocq (1775-1857); as head of the Paris detective force, he is said to have given improper instruction in a girl’s school.

American frontiersman who lived from 1734 to 1820.

Code of law proclaimed by the Byzantine emperor Justinian I (483-565).

A small coin.

Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634) commented on property law written by Sir Thomas

A trover is a legal action to recover property improperly acquired by another.

Hymn or phrase praising God.

Popular name for England (John Bell) and America (Brother Jonathan).

“Of a whale it suffices that the king has the head and the queen the tail” (Latin). Henry de Bracton,
De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae
(thirteenth century).

Five maritime towns in southeastern England organized for defense in 1278.

Cheating by deception or trickery.

English jurist Sir William Blackstone (1723-1780) was the author of a famous work on law.

Possibly the third-century period of Chinese history known for chivalry; here used ironically.

Edmund Plowden (1518-1585) wrote commentaries on law.
^‡
English political figure and Puritan pamphleteer who lived from 1600 to 1669; later loyal to King Charles II.

The quotation is from
Pseudodoxia Epidemica
(1646), commonly known as
Vulgar Errors
, by Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682).

Probably from the French word
crapauds
, meaning toads.

A laxative.

See the Bible, I Corinthians 15:42-43.

Philippus Aureolus Paracelsus (1493-1541), Swiss physician and alchemist.

The Roman emperor Constantine the Great (c. 288-337) built baths that were large and luxurious.

Louis VI (1081-1137), king of France; called Louis the Fat.

Now usually
squeegee
.

An idol in the form of a phallus for the Canaanite fertility goddess Asherah.

Author’s note: Bible leaves! Bible leaves! This is the invariable cry from the mates to the mincer. It enjoins him to be careful, and cut his work into as thin slices as possible, inasmuch as by so doing the business of boiling out the oil is much accelerated, and its quantity considerably increased, besides perhaps improving it in quality.

Overfull
; here,
fat
.

Burning mixture used in medieval warfare by the Byzantine Greeks.

Greek admiral Constantine Kanaris (1791-1877) sent burning ships against a Turkish fleet; Hydra was the home port of the Greek revolutionary navy.

The quotation is from the Bible (KJV), Proverbs 21:16.

Remaining loyal to the Lord, the three are protected from a fiery death; see the Bible, Daniel 3.

Opaque cotton cloth.

Passage of the soul from one body to another, a doctrine attributed to the Greek philosopher Pythagoras, who lived in the sixth century B.C.

River in ancient Lydia, now Turkey, noted for gold-bearing sands.

Capital of Equador, which issued the corn.

Daniel read secret writing prophesying the Chaldean king Belshazzar’s death; see the Bible, Daniel 5:24.
^†
Observing.

See note on p. 197.

Nathan Daboll (1750-1818); author of
Daboll’s Complete School master’s Assistant: Being a plain, Practical System of Arithmetic.

Resident of the Isle of Man, a British island in the Irish Sea.

Lindley Murray (1745-1826) wrote
The English Grammar
(1795, often reprinted).

Drink of liquor or wine mixed with sugar, egg, and nutmeg.

Islands near the Solomon Islands in the western Pacific.

In Greek myth, the courtier Damocles extolled the happiness of Dionysis I, who demonstrated its fragility by hanging above Damocles a sword suspended by a hair.

See note on p. 287.

Geological period 1.6 to 65 million years ago.

See note on p. 223.

Sir Richard Owen (1804-1892).

Patriarch said to have lived 969 years; see the Bible, Genesis 5:27.

The eldest son of Noah’s three sons; see the Bible, 5:32.

Pliny the Elder (c. A.D. 23-79), Roman naturalist.

Ulisse Aldrovanndi (1522-1605), Italian naturalist.

The Thames Tunnel, 1,200 feet long, connecting Rotherhide and Wapping; it opened in 1843.

See note p. 144.
^‡
Bernard G. E. Lacépède (1756-1825).
^§
Separates Siberia and Alaska.

Mythical Assyrian queen.

See note on p. 447.

Carthaginian general, enemy of Rome, who lived from 247 to c. 183 B.C.

A lama is a religious leader in Tibetan Buddhism.

Author’s note: In Sperm-whalemen with any considerable quantity of oil on board, it is a regular semi-weekly duty to conduct a hose into the hold, and drench the casks with sea-water; which afterwards, at varying intervals is removed by the ship’s pumps. Hereby the casks are sought to be kept damply tight; while by the changed character of the withdrawn water, the mariners readily detect any serious leakage in the precious cargo.

Now Taiwan.

Small tackle for use on shipboard.

Persian religious teacher of the sixth century B.C.

One of an ancient semitic people who formed a dominant element in Babylonia.

The Laccadive Islands are off the southwestern coast of India.

Chain of islands in the West Indies.

Burial place for the poor.

The magi were ancient Zoroastrian priests thought to have supernatural powers.

Japan was effectively closed to trade until 1854, when American naval officer Matthew C. Perry established commerce between Japan and the United States.

In Greek myth, a fertility god.

Small birds of the petrel group, especially the Stormy Petrel.

“I baptize you not in the name of the father, but of the devil!”

Suggestive of places of punishment.

Instrument used in navigation.

Elsewhere (for example, on pp. 102 and 492) the ship has a tiller, not a wheel.

Three brothers who fought for Rome’s supremacy.

Timbers bracing the bowsprit.

Nautical gear.

Lights caused by atmospheric electricity.

In the Bible, the mysterious words that Daniel reads; on p. 500.

Roman town destroyed with Pompei by the eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79.

Constellation and eleventh sign of the zodiac.

Device to measure a vessel’s speed.

King Herod of Palestine ordered the killing of boys two years old and younger in Bethlehem, thinking that thereby he would destroy the foretold Christ child.

Refers to Shakespeare’s
Hamlet
, act 5, scene 1.

The Galápagos Islands are 600 miles west of Equador; Melville saw them during his whaling trip and later described them in his story “The Encantadas.”

Jacob’s wife, barren for years, until she became the mother of Joseph and Benjamin; see the Bible, Genesis 29:15.

In Roman tradition, an Etruscan who became emperor.

Large merchant ship with a fine cargo.

In classical myth, he takes the form of a white bull and carries Europa off to Crete.

Rock formation spanning the gorge at Cedar Creek.

Author’s note: This motion is peculiar to the sperm whale. It receives its designation (pitchpoling) from its being likened to that preliminary up-and-down poise of the whale-lance, in the exercise called pitchpoling, previously described. By this motion the whale must best and most comprehensively view whatever objects may be encircling him.

See the Bible, I Maccabees 6:34.

Mountain in southwestern New Hampshire.

A mirage.

See the Bible, Job 1:15-19.

In classical myth, the king of the Lapithae, who is punished by being bound to an eternally revolving wheel.

Adapted from Richard Henry Dana, Jr.’s
The Seaman’s Friend
(Boston: Thomas Groom and Company, 1845), pp. 96-130.