228 
GOOD WHALING STATION. 
It has often surprised me, that the English having 
so many colonies and settlements on the shores of 
Australia, should never think it worth their while to 
send whalers to fish off its coasts, where the whales 
are in such great numbers, and where the bays and 
harbours are so numerous and convenient, for 
carrying on this lucrative employment. I believe 
scarcely a single vessel fishes any where off these 
coasts, which are entirely monopolised by the French 
and Americans, who come in great numbers ; there 
cannot, I think, be less than three hundred foreign 
vessels annually whaling off the coasts, and in the 
seas contiguous to our possessions in the Southern 
Ocean. I have generally met with a great many 
French and American vessels in the few ports or 
bays that I have occasionally been at on the southern 
coast of Australia ; and I have no doubt that they 
all reap a rich harvest. 
Among the many relics strewed around Fowler’s 
Bay, I found the shell of a very large turtle laying 
on the beach ; it had been taken by the crew of the 
vessel that I met at Port Lincoln, and could not 
have weighed less than three to four hundred 
weight. I was not previously aware that turtle was 
ever found so far to the southward, and had never 
seen the least trace of them before. 
