On the 6th and 7th of August we fell in with the barques Aladdin and Lady Emma, and the brig Jane, all of Hobartown, carrying the English flag. These were the first whalers we had seen carrying other than our own glorious banner. We gammoned them, and found them but indifferent craft--their rigging poor, and scarce any discipline existing aboard of them; their slouching arrangements contrasting unfavorably with our own neat and tidy appearance. Their crews are composed principally of convicts who have served out their terms of sentence, and ticket-of-relief men: with such material it is scarcely possible to form a good crew. Their officers and captains were, in many cases, from the same class of society; and on board one of the barques the master was so ignorant as to be compelled to carry a navigator, who directed all the movements of the ship, except when they were whaling. A few Yankees were amongst them--in every case deserters from American whalers. The residue of their crews contained representatives from all parts of the world--black, yellow and brown; Portuguese, New Zealanders, Kanackas from all of the South Sea Islands, and Negroes. Aboard some of these ships the forecastle is partitioned into two apartments, in one of which the blacks, and in the other the whites reside--neither party encroaching on the other. These ships usually fit out for fifteen months, but generally return within the year; their forecastles look desolate, from the fact that none of the crew bring chests to sea with them; their stock of clothes consisting, in many instances, only of the suit they wear upon their backs. Their bedding, too, from lack of attention to their outfit, is very scant, and is therefore insufficient in such cool weather as prevails in the Bight at this season of the year. They were disposed to grumble, and exceeded the usual modicum of growling accorded to the sailor. They envied us our positions, and were very desirous of effecting an exchange; some went so far as to ask to be concealed when their boat left our ship. They represented that their ships were leaky, and the officers ignorant; and inveighed in unmeasured terms against their rations, describing them as scant and unwholesome. These must not be considered as fair specimens of the Hobartown shipping, as afterward we saw vessels in which, although their management could not compare with ours, their crews were at least contented, and their vessels and rigging presented a much better appearance to a seaman’s eye. On board these ships grog is allowed; by some, daily; others, semi-and tri-weekly; and when we informed them that we sailed on the total abstinence principle, they expressed much astonishment at the fact, and wondered how we got along without liquor.