a06 ADVENTURE IN NEW ZEALAND. Chap. XL 
CHAPTER XL 
A colonist hires a whaling-station— PonVtm — Native custom of 
plunder — H. M. S. Herald — Kapiti — The whalers — Ingredients 
of the class — Character — Knowledge — Early history — Savage in- 
tercourse between shipping and natives — Mr. Marsden brought 
convicts to New Zealand — Sealers of the South — Foundation of 
whaling settlements in Cook's Strait — Perils — Increase in 
strength — Precarious commerce — Social arrangements — Articles 
— Laws of the Bay — The season — Banks — Whaling argot^ or 
" slang " — Preparations — The boats — The tackle — Words of 
command — Works on shore — Officers — Native wives, or wahine 
— A whale signalled — The chase — Stratagems — A new hand — 
" Making fast " — Running — She " sounds " — The headsman — 
Killing a wheJe — The ''flurry" — Towing home— Orgies — Hos- 
pitality — A whaler's house — Cleanliness — The " old man " — His 
boat — Discipline of whalers — Courage — Dispute between whalers 
and Rauperaha — Improvement among natives owing to whalers 
—Bad qualities acquired from the same source — The whalers the 
first pioneers — Their life in the new settlements — Sawyers — 
Traders — "Beach-combers" — List of whaling-stations in 1844 — 
Statistics — Inexpediency of shore-whaling — The whalers might 
have become buccaneers — Disorderly whalers — Industrious car- 
penter — Wareho fishing. 
Macgregor was just about to return to TVanganui^ 
having turned the dollars which he received for his 
charter into goods fit for bartering with the natives. 
I took a passage in the Surprise to Kapiti, and we 
sailed on the 17th of June. Having to deliver some 
casks at Porirua, where two of our colonists had hired 
Tom's fishery at Parramatta for the season, we entered 
that harbour, and anchored close to the sheers in 
twelve fathoms. A whale was being cut-in under 
them, and we took swarms of fish, which had been 
attracted by the carcass. Lieutenant Joseph Thomas, 
one of the lessees of the fishery, received me very hos- 
