Moby Dick

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CHAPTER 55. Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales.


I shall ere long paint to you as well as one can without canvas,
something like the true form of the whale as he actually appears to the
eye of the whaleman when in his own absolute body the whale is moored
alongside the whale-ship so that he can be fairly stepped upon there.
It may be worth while, therefore, previously to advert to those
curious imaginary portraits of him which even down to the present day
confidently challenge the faith of the landsman. It is time to set the
world right in this matter, by proving such pictures of the whale all
wrong.

It may be that the primal source of all those pictorial delusions will
be found among the oldest Hindoo, Egyptian, and Grecian sculptures. For
ever since those inventive but unscrupulous times when on the marble
panellings of temples, the pedestals of statues, and on shields,