and in 1846, when Bishop Salvado first landed in the colony, whaling had, as he says, brought large sums of money into it. But either through want of capital or of enterprise, or the lack of both combined, together with a dreamy reliance on the all-sufficiency of Government "contracts," the colonists, for many years past, have contented themselves with merely fitting out boats intended to fish from the shore, instead of following the whales over the ocean in well-found ships, like the Americans, so that now the capture of even one solitary fish is considered a very noteworthy occurrence. In the meantime the whale fishery par excellence has passed into the possession of the watchful Americans, whose ships the colonists have seen returning year by year with the utmost regularity, contented to buy of them the sperm oil, which ought to have been their own, whenever the alien fishers thought fit to dispose of it in Western Australia.
I found that before the breaking out of the war between North and South which detained American sailors upon their own shores, the arrival of the Yankee whalers at a stated season had been quite looked forward to by the inhabitants of Bunbury and the Vasse, not only as a little break to the twelvemonth's uniformity, but also as a source of friendly intercourse and trading. One of our colonial acquaintances, who had a cattle station near Cape Naturaliste, told us that at one time a whaling captain was in the habit, on the expiration of his annual voyage, of leaving an empty ship's cask in her hands to be called for in the following year, by which time she was accustomed to have it filled for him with salted beef. The urbanities of life were also mingled
