Ambergris — Moby-Dick

Ishmael writes about ambergris, the waxy perfume Stubb found in the dried whale. It is so valuable that Captain Coffin from Nantucket had to testify before the English House of Commons in 1791. For a long time no one knew where it came from. Ambergris is not the same as amber. Real amber is hard and found on land. Ambergris is soft, smells wonderful, and comes only from the sea. People use it in perfume, candles, hair powder, and even cook with it. Wine makers put a few grains in claret.

Ishmael says fine ladies and gentlemen enjoy a perfume made inside a sick whale's guts. Some think the ambergris causes the whale's stomach trouble, and others think it is the result. Stubb once found hard round bones inside ambergris that looked like trouser buttons but were really squid bones. Ishmael compares this to St. Paul, who wrote that we are sown in dishonor but raised in glory. He also notes that Cologne water smells worst at the start of making it.

Then Ishmael fights back against the idea that all whalers and whales smell bad. That rumor started when Greenland ships carried raw blubber in casks to London and opened them like graveyards. A Dutch village called Schmerenburgh boiled whale fat on shore and stank for miles. Southern sperm whalers work differently. They boil only fifty days in four years, and their casked oil is nearly scentless. Healthy sperm whales even smell good when they lift their tails above the water.