Leviathan. 
231 
the Swift, which had once been a crack French 
privateer, his prize to Sydney. The story of 
the fight has been told in the old Sydney records, 
and it is not the only one of the kind which 
took place in these seas. Can it be that such 
episodes still linger in the traditions of the 
descendants of the Dutch settlers, and that the 
rankling of old wounds prompted the remark¬ 
able treatment of one Captain Carpenter, in the 
Costa Rica Packet —the one ewe whaling barque 
of Sydney—four or five years ago ? 
The whalers of those times had much to do 
with the discovery and exploration of the coasts 
of Australia and New Zealand, and deserters 
and men marooned from the whaleships began 
to settle on the islands of the Pacific—long 
before the missionaries were ever heard of. 
Van Dieman’s Land, or Tasmania, as it is 
now called, was already beginning to assume 
an importance in connection with the fishery. 
A Gazette of December, 1806, reports that 
Captain Rhodes of the Alexander whaler had 
arrived from the Derwent and Adventure Bay. 
He had about 100 tuns of oil, and a number of 
black swans from the River Huon. Rhodes 
told the interviewer of the day that he was of 
