Chapter 6 - The Street.

If I had been astonished at first catching a glimpse of so outlandish an individual as Queequeg circulating among the polite society of a civilized town, that astonishment soon departed upon taking my first daylight stroll through the streets of New Bedford.

In thoroughfares nigh the docks, any considerable seaport will frequently offer to view the queerest looking nondescripts from foreign parts. Even in Broadway and Chestnut streets, Mediterranean mariners will sometimes jostle the affrighted ladies. Regent Street is not unknown to Lascars and Malays; and at Bombay, in the Apollo Green, live Yankees have often scared the natives. But New Bedford beats all Water Street and Wapping. In these last-mentioned haunts you see only sailors; but in New Bedford, actual cannibals stand chatting at street corners; savages outright; many of whom yet carry on their bones unholy flesh. It makes a stranger stare.

But, besides the Feegeeans, Tongatobooarrs, Erromanggoans, Pannangians, and Brighggians, and, besides the wild specimens of the whaling-craft which unheeded reel about the streets, you will see other sights still more curious, certainly more comical. There weekly arrive in this town scores of green Vermonters and New Hampshire men, all athirst for gain and glory in the fishery. They are mostly young, of stalwart frames; fellows who have felled forests, and now seek to drop the axe and snatch the whale-lance. Many are as green as the Green Mountains whence they came. In some things you would think them but a few hours old. Look there! that chap strutting round the corner. He wears a beaver hat and swallow-tailed coat, girdled with a sailor-belt and sheath-knife. Here comes another with a sou'-wester and a bombazine cloak.

No town-bred dandy will compare with a country-bred one--I mean a downright bumpkin dandy--a fellow that, in the dog-days, will mow his two acres in buckskin gloves for fear of tanning his hands. Now when a country dandy like this takes it into his head to make a distinguished reputation, and joins the great whale-fishery, you should see the comical things he does upon reaching the seaport. In bespeaking his sea-outfit, he orders bell-buttons to his waistcoats; straps to his canvas trowsers. Ah, poor Hay-Seed! how bitterly will burst those straps in the first howling gale, when thou art driven, straps, buttons, and all, down the throat of the tempest.

But think not that this famous town has only harpooneers, cannibals, and bumpkins to show her visitors. Not at all. Still New Bedford is a queer place. Had it not been for us whalemen, that tract of land would this day perhaps have been in as howling condition as the coast of Labrador. As it is, parts of her back country are enough to frighten one, they look so bony. The town itself is perhaps the dearest place to live in, in all New England. It is a land of oil, true enough: but not like Canaan; a land, also, of corn and wine. The streets do not run with milk; nor in the spring-time do they pave them with fresh eggs. Yet, in spite of this, nowhere in all America will you find more patrician-like houses; parks and gardens more opulent, than in New Bedford. Whence came they? how planted upon this once scraggy scoria of a country?

Go and gaze upon the iron emblematical harpoons round yonder lofty mansion, and your question will be answered. Yes; all these brave houses and flowery gardens came from the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. One and all, they were harpooned and dragged up hither from the bottom of the sea. Can Herr Alexander perform a feat like that?

In New Bedford, fathers, they say, give whales for dowers to their daughters, and portion off their nieces with a few porpoises a-piece. You must go to New Bedford to see a brilliant wedding; for, they say, they have reservoirs of oil in every house, and every night recklessly burn their lengths in spermaceti candles.

In summer time, the town is sweet to see; full of fine maples--long avenues of green and gold. And in August, high in air, the beautiful and bountiful horse-chestnuts, candelabra-wise, proffer the passer-by their tapering upright cones of congregated blossoms. So omnipotent is art; which in many a district of New Bedford has superinduced bright terraces of flowers upon the barren refuse rocks thrown aside at creation's final day.

And the women of New Bedford, they bloom like their own red roses. But roses only bloom in summer; whereas the fine carnation of their cheeks is perennial as sunlight in the seventh heavens. Elsewhere match that bloom of theirs, ye cannot, save in Salem, where they tell me the young girls breathe such musk, their sailor sweethearts smell them miles off shore, as though they were drawing nigh the odorous Moluccas instead of the Puritanic sands.

Chapter 7 - The Chapel.
Chapter 5 - Breakfast.

Footnotes

  1. Now for some words of interpretation. In this chapter Melville introduces us to one of his main tasks in regards to his novel: to explicate the whaling industry. Melville begins this task by describing a booming town, grown rich through the business of whaling, in New England, America. Melville does this explicitly through the wise words of his beloved narrator, Ishmael. It is made abundantly clear that all of the beauties and richness of this town is due only to whaling and the success this business has brought new England. If one lists all of the interesting things and beautiful sights that Ishmael sees, the point of the list is to lift up the industry of whaling as the most profitable in early America. In a tiny bit of a humorous twist, even the beauty of the women of New Bedford is credited to whaling. For a further explanation and description of plot, please see my first note that begins with the following phrase: “First let us expound upon the plot of this particular chapter.”

    — Noelle Thompson

  2. Here, Ishmael indicates a particular truth:  New Bedford is what it is because of the whaling industry.  Although it may seem to the reader something of small importance, one must understand that Herman Melville wrote Moby Dick in installments for New Englanders not only for their reading entertainment around the fire, but also for the establishment, the embellishment, and the continuance of the whaling industry.  Thus begins Herman Melville's description of whaling through his character of Ishmael.  Although many publishers cut out the meat of Moby Dick, that "meat" is, in fact, the exact description of "how to succeed in the whaling industry of Old New England."  The novel in all of its installments is quite thick indeed and full of the "how-to's" of whaling.  It is how the book is meant to be read.  Remove the information on how to whale and one removes one of the true purposes of Melville's work.  In fact, if one does so, one would be left with an exciting adventure story with no reason for its existence. 

    — Noelle Thompson

  3. A reader must marvel at the difference in the description of the "town" dandy and the "bumpkin" dandy.  Both are comical chaps, even to the likes of Ishmael who (if the reader will remember) has become the butt of the jokes of Mr. Coffin the very night before.

    — Noelle Thompson

  4. The irony of this first sentence of the chapter called "The Street" is that Ishmael proves himself to be one of the same country "bumpkins" he jeers at later in the chapter.  Ishmael has spent previous chapters recording his surprise and horror (and finally his acceptance) of the strange South Sea Islander named Queequeg.  However, it turns out that the cannibal, Queequeg, is just one of many interesting foreigners on the streets of New Bedford.

    — Noelle Thompson

  5. First, let us expound upon the plot of this particular chapter. Here, Ishmael finally finishes breakfast and makes it out into the streets of New Bedford. Ishmael considers New Bedford America at its finest. The entire town, a bustling seaport, is booming because of the very whaling industry that brings Ishmael to the place, himself. Most of all, Ishmael is impressed by the very different kinds of people that can be found in New Bedford. Not only are there the real cannibals (like Queequeg) from the South Seas, but also the other foreigners (such as those from India) and even the country folks from inland America who arrive in New England to seek adventure and sport their own strange style of clothing. Ishmael even describes the women of New Bedford as the “most beautiful” in all of America. Even though the descriptions of New Bedford’s people dominate Ishmael’s speech, he also notices the beautiful homes, parks, gardens and architecture. Ishmael ends his description with the flowers, the seasons, and the women. Even though Ishmael still describes the town as “queer,” the truth of the matter is that everything about New Bedford is praised by Ishmael. It is whaling, of course, that has made this town what it is. For further explanation, please see my note at the end of this book beginning with the following phrase: "Now for some words of interpretation."

    — Noelle Thompson

  6. Here Ishmael begins to describe the interesting foreigners of New Bedford.  One can see both cannibals and country "bumpkins" in the same town.  A reader would be hard pressed to consider two more appropriate opposites.

    — Noelle Thompson