Chap. XI. WHALERS-NATIVE WIVES. 323 
officers have been selected — such as cooper, carpenter, 
steward, cooks, painter, and "tonguer." The last- 
mentioned dignitary takes his name from having an 
exclusive right to the oil obtained from the tongue 
and other interior parts of the whale, in payment of 
his duty of " cutting-in," or dissecting, the whale. To 
a large party there was generally attached a clerk, who 
kept the accounts of each man at the store ; that is to 
say, that the men were all allowed to run into debt at 
the beginning of the season, receiving clothing, to- 
bacco, and spirits at most exorbitant prices, so that the 
balance, if any, to be paid them in money at the end 
of the season might be as small as possible. Then the 
station was provisioned with potatoes and firewood 
bought from the natives ; pigs bought, killed, and 
salted down, and every preparation made. 
A very important one was the providing the whole 
party with native wives for the season. Those men 
who had remained during the summer were generally 
provided with a permanent companion, among whose 
relations they had been living, either in perfect idle- 
ness, or employed in cultivating a small patch of land, 
or in buying pork and potatoes from the natives and 
selling them again for goods to the ships which 
touched on the coast. But the men who returned 
regularly with the oil to Sydney, or were then enter- 
ing on their first season, went with such of their 
comrades as were well known by the natives to the 
different villages in the neighbourhood, for the purpose 
of procuring a helpmate during the season. Regular 
bargains were struck between the experienced headsman 
or boat-steerer and the relations of the girls selected 
and in most cases the bargains were punctually ad- 
hered to. In cases where the wife was negligent or 
slow to learn her duties "of cooking, clothes-mending, 
y2 
