^5o TRAVELS IN 
being long disturbed on one station, entirely abandon it and 
seek for repose on a different coast. Our Southern whale 
fishers may probably therefore, in the course of a few years, 
be compelled to change their fishing ground from the coasts 
of South America to those of South Africa. 
If policy requires the encouragement of all our fisheries by 
bounties, and that with a view of increasing the nursery of 
seamen to Great Britain and Ireland ; it may, perhaps, be 
expedient to extend that encouragement to the inhabitants 
of the Cape of Good Hope, a measure which could not fail 
to bring together the South Sea fishers to its ports to com- 
plete their cargoes, giving, by their means, an increased 
energy and activity to the trade and industry of the settle- 
ment. 
The situation, the security, and the conveniencies of the 
Kni/sjia, are admirably adapted for carrying into execution a 
fishery on such a plan. Every material either is, or might be, 
produced upon the spot for equipping their ships. The land 
is here the very best that the colony affords, and it so hap- 
pens, that the six months in which it might be dangerous to 
fish on this coast, are the suitable season for cultivating the 
land. Such small craft might also find their advantage ia 
running down to the islands in the South Seas and picking 
up a cargo of seals, and thus anticipate the Americans, who, 
by means of their fishery and ginseng, and the produce of 
thfeir lumber cargoes, have worked themselves, as we have 
already had occasion to notice, into a valuable portion of the 
China trade. Whereas if oil taken on the coast by the small 
