Chap. XI. WHALERS— THEIR CHARACTER. 311 
paving the way for more improved vehicles of civiliza- 
tion, and have naturally yielded with more ease than 
the natives to amalgamation with the race from which 
they sprang. The class still exists, and the chief 
occupation of its members tends to maintain some of 
their peculiar qualities ; but I am induced to dwell on 
what I know of their lives, habits, and character, from 
having had the opportunity of observing them whilst 
they were unimpaired in originality, and the sole di- 
rectors of change, whether for better or worse, among 
the natives. 
The class, as a whole, may be called " the whalers ;" 
though I have observed some varieties of the genus, 
which have also their own nomenclature. 
The whalers who established themselves on the 
coasts of New Zealand were composed of sailors, who 
had committed no crime, but were tempted, by the 
facility of living in comfort on shore there, to leave 
their ships ; and of runaway convicts from the neigh- 
bouring penal settlements in New South Wales and 
Van Diemen's Land. Some few, born in those colonies, 
were probably descended from members of one or the 
other of these two classes. These " currency lads," as they 
are called, are distinguished for great physical strength 
and beauty ; and have probably been indebted to their 
early acquaintance with the hardy life of a stock- 
keeper or shepherd, and their consequent experience 
of the intercourse between the White man and the 
savage, for that moral ascendancy which they generally 
acquire over their classmates in New Zealand. 
From the varied nature of these ingredients arises 
the contradiction of character for which the whalers 
are so remarkable. The frankness and manly courage 
of the sailor mingle with the cunning and reckless 
daring of the convict, or " lag," in no common manner. 
