評論
打印
and, furthermore, I compiled supplementary tables of my own, touching the probable quantity of stock-fish, etc, consumed by every Low Dutch harpooneer in that ancient Greenland and Spitzbergen whale fishery. In the first place, the amount of butter, and Texel and Leyden cheese consumed, seems amazing. I impute it, though, to their naturally unctuous natures, being rendered still more unctuous by the nature of their vocation, and especially by their pursuing their game in those frigid Polar Seas, on the very coasts of that Esquimaux country where the convivial natives pledge each other in bumpers of train oil.
而且，我還把有關貯藏的魚等的可能數量，給編了一張補充表格，想計算出在先前格陵蘭和斯匹次卑爾根群島的捕鯨業中，每個荷蘭標槍手的消耗量來。首先，就所消耗的牛油，泰克塞爾和來頓奶酪的數量說來，似乎就頗為驚人。不過，我認為這是他們天生愛好吃油的緣故，而且也更進一步地考慮到他們那行業的性質就是油膩膩的，尤其是他們都在那種嚴寒的北極地帶，在那個愛斯基摩的沿海地方，追擊獵物，在那里，那些快活的土人，就是經常彼此用滿杯的鯨油來干杯的。
The quantity of the beer, too, is very large, 10,800 barrels. Now, as those polar fisheries could only be prosecuted in the short summer of that climate, so that the whole cruise of one of these Dutch whalemen, including the short voyage to and from the Spitzbergen sea, did not much exceed three months, say, and reckoning 30 men to each of their fleet of 180 sail, we have 5,400 Low Dutch seamen in all; therefore, I say, we have precisely two barrels of beer per man, for a twelve weeks' allowance, exclusive of his fair proportion of that 550 ankers of gin. Now, whether these gin and beer harpooneers, so fuddled as one might fancy them to have been, were the right sort of men to stand up in a boat's head, and take good aim at flying whales; this would seem somewhat improbable. Yet they did aim at them, and hit them too.
啤酒的數量，一萬零八百桶，也是十分可觀。由于那些北極捕魚業只能在那地方的短促夏季中活動，所以，一只荷蘭捕鯨船的整個巡游期間，包括到斯匹次卑爾根群島的短促的來回航程，總是不大會超過三個月，假定這一百八十艘船，算它每艘船有三十個人，那么，總共便是五千四百個荷蘭捕鯨人了；因此，我說，正好是每個人攤到二桶啤酒（十二個星期的飲量），還不包括那數量相當可觀的五百五十安克杜松子酒在內。這就不免叫人對他們發生懷疑了，究竟這些把杜松子酒和啤酒喝得這么泥醉的標槍手，是否會神清志爽地站在艇頭上，瞄得準那如飛的大鯨的目標，看來這好象有點不大可能。然而，他們的確不僅都瞄準了目標，而且還都中了的。
