I asked him why he carried such a troublesome thing with him ashore, and whether all whaling ships did not find their own harpoons.

To this, in substance, he replied, that though what I hinted was true enough, yet he had a particular affection for his own harpoon, because it was of assured stuff, well tried in many a mortal combat, and deeply intimate with the hearts of whales.

In short, like many inland reapers and mowers, who go into the farmers' meadows armed with their own scythes--though in no wise obliged to furnish them--even so, Queequeg, for his own private reasons, preferred his own harpoon.
Shifting the barrow from my hand to his, he told me a funny story about the first wheelbarrow he had ever seen.

It was in Sag Harbor.

The owners of his ship, it seems, had lent him one, in which to carry his heavy chest to his boarding house.