o the everlasting disgrace of Napoleon's Island governor, detained
a prisoner for more than six years. Of course the English Government
ultimately procured his release, but it took them all that time to do
it; and when he did get back they promoted his juniors over his head.
When he died in 1814, a broken heart was as much as anything else the
cause of his death.

Bass, after leaving Australia, went to England and sailed in an armed
merchantman bound to South America. At Valparaiso the Governor of the
town refused to allow the vessel to trade. Bass, who was then in
command of the ship, threatened to bombard the town, and the refusal was
withdrawn; but, watching their opportunity the authorities seized
him when he was off his guard, and it was supposed he was sent to the
interior. As the years passed by there were one or two reports that
he was seen working in the mines, but it seems to have been no one's
business to inquire into his fate. It is more than probable that the
brave Bass died a slave.

But the whalers, "South Seamen" and East Indiamen, did no less good
service than the King's ships in the early days, and yet even the old
books do them but scant justice. For the first fifty years of Australian
colonisation the merchantmen charted reefs, discovered harbours, and did
just those things for the desert waters of the Australasian Pacific as
were afterwards done by land explorers, in their camel and pack-horse
journey-ings into the waterless interior of the continent And the
stories that could be told! The whalers and sealers who were cast away
on desert islands, and lived Robinson Crusoe lives for years! The open
boat voyages. The massacres by blacks. The cuttings-off by the savage
islanders of the South Pacific. The mutinies and sea fights!

Hobart in Tasmania, Twofold Bay in New South Wales, and many New
Zealand ports were the great whaling stations, and Sydney the commercial
headquarters. Fifty years ago there were something like twenty whalers
in the Hobart Fleet alone; now, one or two hulks lying in Whaler's
"Rotten Row" is practically all that survives of the trade.

The Americans took a leading part in the industry, and ships with _New
Bedford_ or _Nantucket_ under their sterns traversed the Pacific from
one end to the other. Australian whaling was begun (Dampier reported
whales as early as 1699) in Governor Phillip's time, by some of the
convict transports coming out with whaling equipment in their holds