194 ZOOLOGY. 



features in the improved condition of our merchant- 

 navy ; and in none of these respects are well conducted 

 South-Seamen deficient. Though the peculiar duties 

 of their service necessarily involves them in occasional 

 confusion, but a few hours after the required operations 

 are completed, both ship and men are restored to their 

 former clean and orderly state, and scarce a trace re- 

 mains to recall to mind the labour which has been so 

 recently performed.* 



The destination of these ships is appointed in a very 

 cursory manner by their owners ; their movements, 

 most essential to obtain a cargo, being left chiefly to 

 the discretion of their commanders. Some take an 

 eastern, and others a western route. The former class 

 make their outward voyage round the Cape of Good 

 Hope, and hold their cruising grounds in the Indian 

 seas, on the coast of the Asiatic continent, as far as 40 

 North latitude, and around most of the western Poly- 

 nesian islands. Those taking the western route, make 

 a passage round Cape Horn, cruise down the coast of 

 South America, proceed to the westward in the vicinity 

 of the equator, take the " Japan-season," on the western 

 waters of the North Pacific, and, returning to the 

 southward and eastward, search the Calif ornian and 

 Mexican coasts, and the ocean around the more 

 easterly islands of the South Pacific. There is pro- 

 bably no class of ships that more frequently circum- 



* In proof of this I may advance the fact, that when two vessels acci- 

 dently meet on a cruising ground, it is equally an object of interest with 

 each to know if the other has recently taken whales. The shrewd visiter 

 is aware that he cannot obtain the information he seeks by verbal in- 

 quiries, nor from the general appearance of the ship, which is probably 

 as clean as when she left her port ; he therefore first directs his attention 

 to the " cutting falls," to ascertain if any particles of the skin of a 

 recent whale remain entangled in their strands, and thus draws his con- 

 clusions. 



