Page:An account of a voyage to establish a colony at Port Philip in Bass's Strait.djvu/165

( 140 ) southern seas, we were continually surrounded by whales, and were even sometimes obliged to alter our course to avoid striking on them. They often visit the bays about the Cape, and while they sport on the surface, the winds and waves carry them so near the beach, that all their exertions are insufficient to extricate themselves, and they perish on the shore. Their blubber is removed and converted into oil by persons who farm this prerogative from government. Flocks of albatrosses, and various kinds of peterals, follow the whales, and feed on the oily substances which they exude.

On quitting the Cape, it was natural for the reflecting mind to recur back to the history of the first adventurous navigators who passed this formidable rier