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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.


In this same New Bedford there stands a Whaleman's Chapel, and few
are the moody fishermen, shortly bound for the Indian Ocean or
Pacific, who fail to make a Sunday visit to the spot. I am sure that
I did not.

Returning from my first morning stroll, I again sallied out upon this

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