As I was closing out reading chapter 6, I came across the last paragraph, which stood out to me reguarding the land where Ishmael currently resides in New Bedford, Massachusetts, as well as those who inhabit the native land. As Melville is describing the streets of the town and more, he then addresses the people who reside there.

“And the women of New Bedford, they bloom like their own red roses. But roses only bloom in summer; whereas the fine carnation of their cheeks is perennial as sunlight in their seventh heavens. Elsewhere match that bloom of theirs, ye cannot, save in Salem, where they tell me, the young girls breathe such musk, their sailor sweethearts smell them miles offshore, as though they were drawing nigh the odorous Moluccas instead of the Puritanic sands.”

Reading this, I picture what Melville was making us imagine with these metaphors and similes and actual places reguarding where the story takes place, New Bedford, and what the people of that land must crave more of. The women who want their men to come back from sea might have been the only sweet thing to come home to in their dull and dreary hometown in Massachusetts. He describes the women as being sweet like the spices that could be found on the islands that are called Moluccas, “The Spice Islands”, and that was their main motivation to sail back to their native land. The people there must crave a new and more interesting land as they keep going back to what they are used to in their hometown. The Islands of Moluccas were known for colonization, as the land was fruitful for many spices and the variety of animals, and more, which were plentiful there. Many countries fought for control over the land once they realized how abundant a lot of spices and other exports were, which they could make a living off of. The women who had to stay back in their musky, most likely not the most pleasant town, drew their sailor men back to them.

Overall, I can see how this can be taken as they crave and would like a sweeter place to live rather than the basic old town where they currently live.