ships have left it. Should a fishery ever be established on this coast, and which I should suppose likely to answer as well as the one which has been established many years in the Brazil (at Sta Catharina and Rio de Janeiro), I think it would be found to answer best if carried on in small vessels, as it is from Rio de Janeiro; and with respect to the currents, I believe they are neither more frequent nor stronger than what they are on the Brazil coast.'
This was the beginning of South Pacific whaling, which, now practically extinct, for the first half century of Australian colonisation was only second in importance to the wool trade in the commercial history of the colonies.
In April 1790, King had carried home this modestly-worded and characteristically unselfish request from Phillip, in a private letter to Lord Sydney:—
'As the settlement is now fixed, whenever His Majesty's service permits, I shall be glad to return to England, where I have reason to suppose my private affairs may make my presence necessary; but which I do not ask in any publick letters, nor should I mention a desire of leaving this country at this moment, but that more than a year must pass before it can possibly take place, and I make no doubt but that every inconvenience now felt in this colony will be done away before this letter reaches your Lordship. I am sorry to say that nine-tenths of us merit every little inconveniency we now feel.'
