英语听书《白鲸记》第25期

But New Bedford beats all Water Street andWapping. In these last-mentioned haunts you seeonly sailors; but in New Bedford, actual cannibalsstand 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-craftwhich unheeded reel about the streets, you will seeother sights still more curious, certainly morecomical. 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; fellowswho have felled forests, and now seek to drop the axe and snatch the whale-lance. Many areas green as the Green Mountains whence they came. In some things you would think them buta few hours old. Look there! that chap strutting round the corner. He wears a beaver hat andswallow-tailed coat, girdled with a sailor-belt and sheath-knife. Here comes another with asou'-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 tanninghis hands. Now when a country dandy like this takes it into his head to make a distinguishedreputation, and joins the great whale-fishery, you should see the comical things he does uponreaching 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 thefirst howling gale, when thou art driven, straps, buttons, and all, down the throat of thetempest.

But think not that this famous town has only harpooneers, cannibals, and bumpkins to show hervisitors. Not at all. Still New Bedford is a queer place. Had it not been for us whalemen, thattract 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 townitself 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 thespring-time do they pave them with fresh eggs. Yet, in spite of this, nowhere in all America willyou 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 yourquestion will be answered. Yes; all these brave houses and flowery gardens came from theAtlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. One and all, they were harpooned and dragged up hitherfrom the bottom of the sea. Can Herr Alexander perform a feat like that?