We left the anchorage on the 13th, and crossed the bottom of the bay within Copeland Island:  then steering up the west side we passed a large opening, trending to the North-West.  Here we were detained for some time, by grounding upon a sandbank.  But by keeping the sails full, the vessel dragged over it, and we resumed our course to the northward, along the west side of Mountnorris Bay; and, at sunset, anchored between it and Darch’s Island, which protected us from both the wind and swell, during a very squally night.  Darch’s Island, so named after my esteemed friend, Thomas Darch, Esquire, of the Admiralty, is, like Valentia Island, very thickly wooded.  Its eastern side is a continued bluff cliffy shore, but the north and south ends are low, and terminate with a shoal; which, off the former, is of rocks; and near its extremity is a single mangrove bush, which was seen and set from Copeland Island’s summit.

April 14.

The next morning, at daylight, we passed round the north extremity of the island, which was named Cape Croker, in compliment to the first secretary of the Admiralty; and anchored on the north side of a bight round the cape, which was subsequently named Palm Bay.

In the afternoon we landed, and ascending the hill or bank behind the beach, obtained a view of the coast of the bay:  a distant wooded point, called, from its unusual elevation, High Point, bounded our view to the south; but to the South-West some patches of land were indistinctly visible.  Tracks of natives were seen in many places, and the marks of footsteps on the beach had been very recently impressed.  On the bank a circular spot of ground, of fifteen yards in diameter, was cleared away, and had very lately been occupied by a tribe of natives.  The island is thickly wooded with a dwarf species of eucalyptus, but here and there the fan palm and pandanus grew in groups, and with the acacia, served to vary the otherwise monotonous appearance of the country.  The soil, although it was shallow and poor, was covered with grass, and a great variety of shrubs and plants in flower, which fully occupied Mr. Cunningham’s attention.  As we proceeded through the trees, a group of lofty palms attracted our notice, and were at first supposed to be coconut trees that had been planted by the Malays; but on examining them closer, they proved to be the areca, the tree that produces the betel-nut and the toddy, a liquor which the Malays and the inhabitants of all the eastern islands use.  Some of these palms were from thirty to forty feet high, and the stem of one of them was bruised and deeply indented by a blunt instrument.