Chap. XI. WHALERS— MIGHT HAVE BECOME BUCCANEERS. 841 
spent, however, two years at the most on the whaling- 
grounds ; while the colonial whalers would be con- 
stantly in employment, except while discharging and 
relitting at a spot within a week's sail of their work. 
It is friglitful to calculate what might have been 
the consequences had these rough colonizers been 
allowed to go many years more unheeded. That the 
natives would have been speedily exterminated is 
hardly to be doubted — whether by vice and disease, 
or by actual collision with these growing commu- 
nities. 
Their bad effect might even have been felt by all 
the maritime world. In a country so adapted for the 
building and outfitting of ships, and where living was 
so easy and comfortable, the tortuous bays of the 
Pelorus and Queen Charlotte's Sound might have 
swarmed with a powerful nation of buccaneers, pos- 
sessing every requisite for the spoliation of our com- 
merce with Australia and the South Sea Islands. On 
one occasion, when some rumour of a war between 
the United States and Great Britain had reached 
New Zealand, I knew of extensive designs among the 
whalers for seizing as prizes, with their boats alone, 
every American whaler or other ship that might 
approach the Strait. 
Having thus dwelt rather harshly on what the 
whalers might have become, I am bound to say that 
I owe them personally many obligations. Although 
they have a dark side to their character, they claim 
gratitude for their frankness and hospitality, and 
admiration for their extraordinary intrepidity, their 
unbounded resolution, their great power of enduring 
hardships, and their perseverance in overcoming prac- 
tical difficulties. 
