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Updated: May 12, 2025
"Quite true, sir," returned Hazard, "and men that take their lays in sealers, are not to expect anything but squalls. I'm ready to hold on as long as our neighbour yonder; he seems to be trimming down to it, as if in raal earnest to get ahead." This was true enough.
There was mad confusion, and a frantic banging of canvas as the schooner came up beam to the wind, with her rent mainsail flogging itself to tatters. Its ponderous boom was broken, and the mainmast-head had gone, but it was not the first time the sealers had grappled with similar difficulties, and Dampier kept his head.
Caught by hook, 12th May, 1841. No. 54. Native name, MATCHET. "Common blue shark" of the settlers. Specimen four feet and a half long; have been seen longer. A female had four young alive when taken. Spiracles behind the eyes. Caught by hook, 16th August, 1841. No. 26 CESTRACION PHILIPPI, Mull. and Henle. Native names, MATCHET, KORLUCK, or QUORLUCK. "Bull-dog-shark" of the sealers.
This place, also, was discovered to be ill-adapted for a permanent settlement; and a removal again took place to Vansittart or Gun-carriage Island, at the eastern extremity of Franklin Channel, where a number of sealers had been resident for some years; as, however, they could not show any title to the land they cultivated, except that of original occupancy a title which I think should be respected, as it is the only true basis of the right of property they were obliged to vacate, leaving their huts and crops to be laid waste.
It is astonishing what a charm such a wild mode of existence possesses for these men, whom no consideration could induce to abandon their free, though laborious and somewhat lawless state. The term sealers is no longer so appropriate as it was formerly; none of them confining themselves to sealing, in consequence of the increasing scarcity of the object of their original pursuit.
The earth had not stopped in its swift face round the sun at Oyster Pond, while all these events were in the course of occurrence in the antarctic seas. The summer had passed, that summer which was to have brought back the sealers; and autumn had come to chill the hopes as as the body. Winter did not bring any change.
We incline to the opinion that if one slept in a cavern formed in the snow, provided he could keep himself dry, and did not come in absolute contact with the element, he would not find his quarters very uncomfortable, so long as he had sufficient clothing to confine the animal warmth near his person. Now, our sealers enjoyed some such advantage as this; though not literally in the same degree.
Instead of making a good run to the westward we had made a big drift to the south-east. We were actually thirty miles to the east of the position we had occupied when we left the floe on the 9th. It has been noted by sealers operating in this area that there are often heavy sets to the east in the Belgica Straits, and no doubt it was one of these sets that we had experienced.
The sealers have given this spot the name of American Harbour. In it, I am informed, vessels are completely land-locked, and secure from every wind. Kangaroo Island is not, however, fertile by any means. It abounds in shallow lakes filled with salt water during high tides, and which, by evaporation, yield a vast quantity of salt.
"It exceeds my power to make any such bargain. I have an owner who looks sharply after his property, and my crew are upon lays, like the people of all sealers. You ask too much; and you forget that, should I assume the same power over my own craft, as you still claim in this wreck, you might never find the means of getting away from the group at all.
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