rude lance or the mighty club, they rowed to a rock whereon the seals were basking in the sun, and furiously attacked the huge blubbery masses; or they pursued the monsters into their caverned retreats, and fought like knights-errant of olden chivalry. The tripod was raised on the blazing fire, the fatty carcases were melted in the pot, the oil was poured into the barrel, and home came the man toiling with the oar on a tempestuous sea, with his dearly-purchased pleasure.
Success did not always reward their efforts. Many a mile was rowed, and no prey seen. Often would their natural foe, the raging waters, defy their return, imprison them on a sandy strand, unsheltered and unprovisioned, until, starved into resolution, they put off into the surge, and were buried in the sea. At times, imprudent from courage, they were seized by the teeth of the seal, or crushed beneath the ponderous body of the animal. The boat, driven from its moorings by the tempest, might leave the mariner to perish alone on the ocean-girt rock. Even when associated with others, the violence so characteristic of the race would lead to hasty quarrel, and sudden, fatal retribution. Lawless themselves, bound by no ties but convenience and self-interest, conflicts were not uncommon, and the community sought no protection but their own strong arms, their own swift and certain revenge.
Captain Flinders applauded the enterprise and daring of the sealers, as qualities his own nature could well appreciate. But their wild energy led them into such crimes as to call forth the denunciations of Government, and the horror of tranquil citizens. Fifty years ago a colonial paper exclaims: "Are then these men, thus strangers to religion, strangers to principle, among whom rapine of every kind, and even murder, is not unfrequent—are they to be suffered thus to debase human nature?" Again and again were the authorities entreated to disallow any boats in the Straits, and to check, under the cover of sealing, the perpetration of infamous deeds.
M. Peron met with a party on King's Island in 1802. Six of them had been thirteen months on that inhospitable coast, and were waiting for a vessel to convey their skins to port Their rude generosity and attention were admired by the Frenchmen.
But so long as their crimes were confined to themselves, and they only were plagued by their own boisterous passions, they
