{"id":"01KJNXJQYH385TVT76DSK5481H","cid":"bafkreiaojlfhsaf67bbtdk7khp5us66ctfaa3d7cozdppzco4buhz7ag3i","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":442129,"char_start":434157,"chunk_index":61,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1993,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"of the Hartz forests, whose changeless pallor unrustlingly glides\r\nthrough the green of the groves—why is this phantom more terrible than\r\nall the whooping imps of the Blocksburg?\r\n\r\nNor is it, altogether, the remembrance of her cathedral-toppling\r\nearthquakes; nor the stampedoes of her frantic seas; nor the\r\ntearlessness of arid skies that never rain; nor the sight of her wide\r\nfield of leaning spires, wrenched cope-stones, and crosses all adroop\r\n(like canted yards of anchored fleets); and her suburban avenues of\r\nhouse-walls lying over upon each other, as a tossed pack of cards;—it\r\nis not these things alone which make tearless Lima, the strangest,\r\nsaddest city thou can’st see. For Lima has taken the white veil; and\r\nthere is a higher horror in this whiteness of her woe. Old as Pizarro,\r\nthis whiteness keeps her ruins for ever new; admits not the cheerful\r\ngreenness of complete decay; spreads over her broken ramparts the rigid\r\npallor of an apoplexy that fixes its own distortions.\r\n\r\nI know that, to the common apprehension, this phenomenon of whiteness\r\nis not confessed to be the prime agent in exaggerating the terror of\r\nobjects otherwise terrible; nor to the unimaginative mind is there\r\naught of terror in those appearances whose awfulness to another mind\r\nalmost solely consists in this one phenomenon, especially when\r\nexhibited under any form at all approaching to muteness or\r\nuniversality. What I mean by these two statements may perhaps be\r\nrespectively elucidated by the following examples.\r\n\r\nFirst: The mariner, when drawing nigh the coasts of foreign lands, if\r\nby night he hear the roar of breakers, starts to vigilance, and feels\r\njust enough of trepidation to sharpen all his faculties; but under\r\nprecisely similar circumstances, let him be called from his hammock to\r\nview his ship sailing through a midnight sea of milky whiteness—as if\r\nfrom encircling headlands shoals of combed white bears were swimming\r\nround him, then he feels a silent, superstitious dread; the shrouded\r\nphantom of the whitened waters is horrible to him as a real ghost; in\r\nvain the lead assures him he is still off soundings; heart and helm\r\nthey both go down; he never rests till blue water is under him again.\r\nYet where is the mariner who will tell thee, “Sir, it was not so much\r\nthe fear of striking hidden rocks, as the fear of that hideous\r\nwhiteness that so stirred me?”\r\n\r\nSecond: To the native Indian of Peru, the continual sight of the\r\nsnow-howdahed Andes conveys naught of dread, except, perhaps, in the\r\nmere fancying of the eternal frosted desolateness reigning at such vast\r\naltitudes, and the natural conceit of what a fearfulness it would be to\r\nlose oneself in such inhuman solitudes. Much the same is it with the\r\nbackwoodsman of the West, who with comparative indifference views an\r\nunbounded prairie sheeted with driven snow, no shadow of tree or twig\r\nto break the fixed trance of whiteness. Not so the sailor, beholding\r\nthe scenery of the Antarctic seas; where at times, by some infernal\r\ntrick of legerdemain in the powers of frost and air, he, shivering and\r\nhalf shipwrecked, instead of rainbows speaking hope and solace to his\r\nmisery, views what seems a boundless churchyard grinning upon him with\r\nits lean ice monuments and splintered crosses.\r\n\r\nBut thou sayest, methinks that white-lead chapter about whiteness is\r\nbut a white flag hung out from a craven soul; thou surrenderest to a\r\nhypo, Ishmael.\r\n\r\nTell me, why this strong young colt, foaled in some peaceful valley of\r\nVermont, far removed from all beasts of prey—why is it that upon the\r\nsunniest day, if you but shake a fresh buffalo robe behind him, so that\r\nhe cannot even see it, but only smells its wild animal muskiness—why\r\nwill he start, snort, and with bursting eyes paw the ground in\r\nphrensies of affright? There is no remembrance in him of any gorings of\r\nwild creatures in his green northern home, so that the strange\r\nmuskiness he smells cannot recall to him anything associated with the\r\nexperience of former perils; for what knows he, this New England colt,\r\nof the black bisons of distant Oregon?\r\n\r\nNo: but here thou beholdest even in a dumb brute, the instinct of the\r\nknowledge of the demonism in the world. Though thousands of miles from\r\nOregon, still when he smells that savage musk, the rending, goring\r\nbison herds are as present as to the deserted wild foal of the\r\nprairies, which this instant they may be trampling into dust.\r\n\r\nThus, then, the muffled rollings of a milky sea; the bleak rustlings of\r\nthe festooned frosts of mountains; the desolate shiftings of the\r\nwindrowed snows of prairies; all these, to Ishmael, are as the shaking\r\nof that buffalo robe to the frightened colt!\r\n\r\nThough neither knows where lie the nameless things of which the mystic\r\nsign gives forth such hints; yet with me, as with the colt, somewhere\r\nthose things must exist. Though in many of its aspects this visible\r\nworld seems formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in\r\nfright.\r\n\r\nBut not yet have we solved the incantation of this whiteness, and\r\nlearned why it appeals with such power to the soul; and more strange\r\nand far more portentous—why, as we have seen, it is at once the most\r\nmeaning symbol of spiritual things, nay, the very veil of the\r\nChristian’s Deity; and yet should be as it is, the intensifying agent\r\nin things the most appalling to mankind.\r\n\r\nIs it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids\r\nand immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the\r\nthought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky\r\nway? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a colour as\r\nthe visible absence of colour; and at the same time the concrete of all\r\ncolours; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness,\r\nfull of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows—a colourless, all-colour\r\nof atheism from which we shrink? And when we consider that other theory\r\nof the natural philosophers, that all other earthly hues—every stately\r\nor lovely emblazoning—the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea,\r\nand the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of\r\nyoung girls; all these are but subtile deceits, not actually inherent\r\nin substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified\r\nNature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover\r\nnothing but the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and\r\nconsider that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her\r\nhues, the great principle of light, for ever remains white or colorless\r\nin itself, and if operating without medium upon matter, would touch all\r\nobjects, even tulips and roses, with its own blank tinge—pondering all\r\nthis, the palsied universe lies before us a leper; and like wilful\r\ntravellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear coloured and colouring\r\nglasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at\r\nthe monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him. And\r\nof all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at\r\nthe fiery hunt?\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 43. Hark!\r\n\r\n“HIST! Did you hear that noise, Cabaco?”\r\n\r\nIt was the middle-watch: a fair moonlight; the seamen were standing in\r\na cordon, extending from one of the fresh-water butts in the waist, to\r\nthe scuttle-butt near the taffrail. In this manner, they passed the\r\nbuckets to fill the scuttle-butt. Standing, for the most part, on the\r\nhallowed precincts of the quarter-deck, they were careful not to speak\r\nor rustle their feet. From hand to hand, the buckets went in the\r\ndeepest silence, only broken by the occasional flap of a sail, and the\r\nsteady hum of the unceasingly advancing keel.\r\n\r\nIt was in the midst of this repose, that Archy, one of the cordon,\r\nwhose post was near the after-hatches, whispered to his neighbor, a\r\nCholo, the words above.\r\n\r\n“Hist! did you hear that noise, Cabaco?”\r\n\r\n“Take the bucket, will ye, Archy?"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJNXEDHZCC8DR4EPSQD0QP4P","peer_label":"moby-dick","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJNXECF9R1EZKS5Z7J8A8ZSB","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"}],"ver":1,"created_at":"2026-03-02T00:01:15.729Z","ts":"2026-03-02T00:01:15.729Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KJ6WPT018SDDANE6N7Q8E428"}}