woodsawyers

"But the Oregonians, and these emigrants thither,—pure democrats all, and independent as woodsawyers—are pre-eminent for equality and love of liberty." (Scenes Beyond the Western Border, September 1852)

Melville on Redburn (1849) and White-Jacket (1850):

 "two jobs which I have done for money—being forced to it as other men are to sawing wood."

From  "Cock-a-Doodle-Doo!" (1853):

At last, one morning there came to me a certain singular man, who had sawed and split my wood in March—some five-and-thirty cords of it—and now he came for his pay. He was a singular man, I say. He was tall and spare, with a long saddish face, yet somehow a latently joyous eye, which offered the strangest contrast. His air seemed staid, but undepressed. He wore a long, gray, shabby coat, and a big battered hat. This man had sawed my wood at so much a cord. He would stand and saw all day in a driving snow-storm, and never wink at it. He never spoke unless spoken to. He only sawed. Saw, saw, saw—snow, snow, snow. The saw and the snow went together like two natural things....

His name was Merrymusk.  (Cock-a-Doodle-Doo!)

Melville on meeting President Lincoln:

"Old Abe is much better looking than I expected & younger looking. He shook hands like a good fellow—working hard at it like a man sawing wood at so much per cord."

punctilios

"I was riding near the head of the column, over the bare prairie, when suddenly, within twenty yards, up sprang a grizzly bear!  He ran about eighty paces, threw himself about, and stood some moments, gazing at us with his head high raised.  "Grizzly bear!" was shouted down the column, and gave an impulse to the true hunters, which strongly tested the punctilios of discipline: a half dozen of us spurred to instant pursuit: away we galloped, toward the mountain, at greater than buffalo speed."  (Scenes Beyond the Western Border, August 1852)

First known letter from Herman Melville to Nathaniel Hawthorne (29 January? 1851):

"Another thing, Mr Hawthorne—Do not think you are coming to any prim nonsensical house—that is nonsensical in the ordinary way.  You wont be much bored with punctilios."(Correspondence, 176)

February 1855:

 "True, he stood upon no punctilios with his jailers..."  (Israel Potter)

Another instance in 1855, this from "Benito Cereno":

As during the telling of the story, Captain Delano had once or twice started at the occasional cymballing of the hatchet-polishers, wondering why such an interruption should be allowed, especially in that part of the ship, and in the ears of an invalid; and, moreover, as the hatchets had anything but an attractive look, and the handlers of them still less so, it was, therefore, to tell the truth, not without some lurking reluctance, or even shrinking, it may be, that Captain Delano, with apparent complaisance, acquiesced in his host's invitation. The more so, since with an untimely caprice of punctilio, rendered distressing by his cadaverous aspect, Don Benito, with Castilian bows, solemnly insisted upon his guest's preceding him up the ladder leading to the elevation; where, one on each side of the last step, sat four armorial supporters and sentries, two of the ominous file. Gingerly enough stepped good Captain Delano between them, and in the instant of leaving them behind, like one running the gauntlet, he felt an apprehensive twitch in the calves of his legs.  (Benito Cereno)

the natural and moral sublime

UPDATE: Transcribed from the St Louis Beacon, the first known printing of A Tale of the Rocky Mountains.

Below, the beginning of "A Tale of the Rocky Mountains" by "BORDERER," as first printed in the St. Louis Beacon, January 13, 1831. 

Late in the afternoon of a spring day, and many years ago, a solitary Indian might have been seen threading the dangerous intricacies of the ascent of one of the Rocky Mountains.  He followed the deep worn chasm of the mountain brook; for a moment he stood where often the flood of waters bore in awful confusion, rocks, earth, and trees; at the next, with the activity of a chamois hunter, he cleared a dreadful space; a moment's contemplation of the void below bounded by peaks of jutting rock, must have reeled the brain of the most hardy.  That rock has stood the monument of ages and man's passing race; and it threatens his destruction at every step.

But, no!  to the mind that can grasp the comparison of the natural and moral sublime, he appears an object of more grandeur than earth in its most imposing attitudes; that small form containing a soul that soars to comprehend the mechanism of a system of worlds, and places the precipice that threatens his animal life in the low places of its sphere. 

Reprinted, with significant revisions in the
Military and Naval Magazine of the United States 6 (September 1835):

A TALE OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.

Late in the afternoon of a spring day, and many years ago, a solitary Indian might have been seen toiling at the dangerous ascent of one of the Rocky Mountains.  He followed the deep-worn chasm of the mountain torrent, where often the flood of waters bore in awful confusion, earth, rocks, and trees.  Now, with the nerve of a chamois hunter, he cleared a fearful space: a moment's contemplation of the void below, bounded by the naked jutting rocks, must have reeled the brain of the most hardy.  And now he traces the projecting ledge of the mountain precipice, ('twas never meant for a path;) below him is death; a look must cost his life; above him vertical granite; not a vine or twig to help him to life; his fingers grow to the rocks! his eagle gaze, if a moment averted, were dimmed; that step may save him! it is made! he is safe.

And later interpolated as the romance of "SHA-WAH-NOW" in the magazine series, "Scenes and Adventures in the Army: Sketches of Indians, and Life Beyond the Border" Southern Literary Messenger 8 (July 1842).

Finally incorporated with most of the Southern Literary Messenger material in the military memoir of Philip St George Cooke, Scenes and Adventures in the Army (Philadelphia: Linday & Blakiston, 1857).

Notice among other revisions the deletion of any reference to "the natural and moral sublime."  The theme possibly reveals the origins of the tale in a grammar school composition.  Harriet Beecher Stowe recalled writing her first school composition at the age of nine, on the assigned topic, "The Difference between the Natural and Moral Sublime." 

The deleted reference to "the natural and moral sublime" shows that "Borderer" in 1831 was still employing schoolboy (and schoolgirl) themes and modes of expression.

I scorn + something

Photo Credit:
Lauren Norsworthy

"No, no, my dear friend, no interest for me. I scorn interest." 
(The Confidence-Man)

 "... for I scorn anachronism...." 
("Scenes Beyond the Western Border," March 1853; and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army.)

on civilization

Review of Typee in Graham's Magazine (May 1846):

[Mr. Melville] writes of what he has seen con amore, and at times almost loses his loyalty to civilization and the Anglo-Saxon race.... "The white civilized man," he considers to be entitled, in point of "remorseless cruelty," to the dubious honor of being " the most ferocious animal on the face of the earth."  So far he seems to think sailors and missionaries have carried little to the barbarous nations which have come under his notice, but disease, starvation and death.

"As a philanthropist in general, and a friend to the Polynesians in particular, I hope that these Edens of the South Seas, blessed with fertile soils and peopled with happy natives, many being yet uncontaminated by the contact of civilization, will long remain unspoiled in their simplicity, beauty, and purity. And as for annexation, I beg to offer up an earnest prayer—and I entreat all present and all Christians to join me in it—that the banns of that union should be forbidden until we have found for ourselves a civilization morally, mentally, and physically higher than one which has culminated in almshouses, prisons, and hospitals.'  (Close of Melville's 1859 lecture on "The South Seas," as reconstructed by Merton M. Sealts, Jr. in Melville as Lecturer)

 "Civilization ever advances sword in hand, with poisons, pestilence and crime in her train."

("Scenes Beyond the Western Border," May 1853; and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

supernal

"... there must exist some greatly inferior spirits; so insignificant, comparatively, as to be overlooked by the supernal powers; and through them it must be, that we are thus grievously annoyed.  At any rate; such a theory would supply a hiatus in my system of metaphysics."  (Mardi)

O! spirit ministers, are ye hovering near, radiant with 
pity divine, on guardian errands, to touch with hope the 
sinking hearts of myriad men? And can no mortal eye 
behold thy subtilty supernal? 
(Scenes and Adventures in the Army)

invoked in vain

Your marbles in the temple stand--
Yourselves as stony, and invoked in vain?  ("Timoleon")

"In vain, in vain!  Dull tyrant space wears its stoniest frown...."
(Scenes and Adventures in the Army)