Chapter IX: Our Butter Fiends

In former days while narrating the events of this voyage, which I have done some thousands of times, I used to say “we whaled.” But I never whaled, never went in the boats, never pulled an oar. I had other fish to fry in the galley, and now that I commence to realize what a conscience is, I mention this for truth’s sake as well as to give variety to the story. We were boarded occasionally by a few Mexicans. There was one melancholy-looking Don Somebody who seemed always in a chronic state of corn-husk cigarette. When not smoking he was rolling them; when not rolling or smoking he was lighting them. He and his companions were persons of some importance, for which reason Captain Reynolds tendered them the hospitalities of the _Henry_ and would ask them to whatever meal was nearest ready. These two Mexicans had enormous stowage for grub. They resembled the gulls. They also seemed unfathomable. There was no filling them. What they did at table they did with all their might, and when they finished, especially when eating by themselves, as they frequently did, there was literally nothing left. “Nothing” in this case meant something. It meant in addition to bread, meat, and potatoes, every scrap of butter on the butter-plate and every grain of sugar in the sugar-bowl. I didn’t take the hint the first time they ate with us, deeming the entire absence of butter and sugar at the end of the repast to be owing to my placing a small amount on the table. The second time they came on board I remedied this. But on inspection after they had finished I found left only an empty butter-plate and sugar-bowl. It was so at the third trial. Butter and sugar seem to be regarded as delicacies by the natives of Lower California. Nor do they seem to comprehend the real mission and import of butter and sugar on the table. They regarded both these articles as regular dishes and scooped them in. On discovering this, after a consultation with the Captain, I put them on allowance. These two men would have eaten up all our butter and sugar in four weeks.

However it was comparatively a slight toll they levied on us for carrying off their whale-oil, seal and abalone. We were miles within their legal boundaries taking away the wealth of their waters. Twelve other American whalers lay in Marguerita Bay that season. It was practically an invasion; only the Mexicans didn’t seem to know they were invaded or didn’t care if they did know. So long as they had plenty of butter and sugar on coming on board and the blubber-stripped carcasses which came on shore they seemed satisfied. These carcasses they cut open when stranded and extracted the fat about the heart, which on being tried out would yield from one to four barrels of oil and about three miles of solid stench. They borrowed from us the vessels wherewith to boil this fat. I was ordered to loan them all the pots, pans, and kettles which could be spared from my culinary laboratory. They never returned them, and I was very glad they did not. No amount of scouring would ever have rid them of the odor of decomposed leviathan. We left them a dozen or so iron vessels the richer. A Mexican, at least on that coast, with a kettle is looked up to as a man of wealth. Beyond serapes, cigarette-lighters, saddles and bridles, the gang of natives on shore had few other possessions. They seemed brilliant examples of contented poverty. The individual Mexican is a more independent being than the citizen of our own boasted “independent” nation. His wants are ten times less. Consequently, he is ten times as independent. Parties who use horses’ skulls for parlor chairs, whose wooden bowl wherein they mix flour for tortillas, flint, steel, and a small bonfire constitute their entire kitchen range, won’t keep many furniture or stove manufacturers alive.

Some mercantile hopes may hang on the señoras and señoritas. The few we saw wanted calicoes of gay and diverse patterns. The men will eat butter and sugar, but whether they will buy these articles remains to be proved. Perhaps furniture sets of polished and painted horses’ skulls might tempt some of the more æsthetic in the matter of household adornment to purchase, if put at a reasonable rate. Such are the conclusions drawn regarding the probabilities of trade with Mexico, at least the fragment of Mexico I saw from my galley. If we wanted any service of them they talked dollars at a very high figure. But they never abated. They showed no anxiety to tempt a bargain or an engagement. They went on just as ever, full to the brim of genuine sang-froid, eternally rolling, lighting, and smoking their cigarettes, and looking as if they felt themselves a superior race, and knew it all, and didn’t want to know any more, until we asked them to eat. Then they seemed in no hurry, but clambered lazily down the cabin stairs and lazily set to work to find the bottom of every dish on the table, including the sugar-dish and butter-plate. I learned on that voyage the true signification of the term “greaser,” as I fearfully noted the rapidly diminishing butter keg.