Here is yet another chapter in which Ishmael observes and comments upon the physiognomy of a whale’s head. First of all, the whale has no nose to speak of, at last not in the typical mammalian sense of a protruding thing. The whale’s nose is atop his head—the blow-hole. Ishmael finds the whale’s forehead, or brow, to be sublime and full of mystery. In observing this impressive brow, he notes, “You feel the Deity and the dread powers more forcibly than in beholding any other object in living nature.”
