228 
Wild Life in Southern Seas. 
the coast of New Zealand. In the latter years 
of the last century, however, the whalemen of 
the time were gaining experience and a better 
knowledge of the habits, feeding-grounds and 
breeding resorts of both the right and sperm 
whale, as well as of the great “ schools ” of 
humpbacks and the less valuable flying fin¬ 
backs, which made their appearance with such 
undeviating regularity on the Australian coast 
at certain seasons of the year; and slowly but 
surely the business of whaling was becoming as 
firmly established in the new colonies as it was 
on the North American seaboard. Turnbull, 
who made a voyage to New South Wales in 
1798, and a voyage round the world in 1800- 
1804, speaks of the growth of the industry 
between the dates of his visits to New South 
Wales. There were, he says, but four whalers 
on the coast of New Holland in 1798, but at 
the time of his second voyage there were four¬ 
teen, whose cargoes, on the average, “ are not 
less than from 150 to 160 tuns of oil, the 
value of which at the present current price 
amounts to between ^180,000 and ^190,000 
annually. 
Very early the Americans began to go south, 
