At daylight we were about four leagues to the West-North-West of Captain Baudin’s Colbert Island; at the back of which were seen some patches of the Coronation Islands.  The night was passed at anchor off the northernmost Coronation Island.

July 23.

And the following afternoon we anchored at about half a mile from the sandy beach of Careening Bay.

As soon as the vessel was secured, we visited the shore, and recognised the site of our last year’s encampment, which had suffered no alteration, except what had been occasioned by a rapid vegetation:  a sterculia, the stem of which had served as one of the props of our mess-tent, and to which we had nailed a sheet of copper with an inscription, was considerably grown; and the gum had oozed out in such profusion where the nails had pierced the bark that it had forced one corner of the copper off.

The large gouty-stemmed tree on which the Mermaid’s name had been carved in deep indented characters remained without any alteration, and seemed likely to bear the marks of our visit longer than any other memento we had left.

The sensations experienced at revisiting a place which had so seasonably afforded us a friendly shelter and such unlooked-for convenience for our purposes, can only be estimated by those who have experienced them; and it is only to strangers to such feelings that it will appear ridiculous to say, that even the nail to which our thermometer had been suspended, was the subject of pleasurable recognition.

We then bent our steps to the water-gully, but, to our mortification, it was quite dried up, and exhibited no vestige of its having contained any for some time.  From the more luxuriant and verdant appearance of the trees and grass than the country hereabout assumed last year, when the water was abundant, we had felt assured of finding it and therefore our disappointment was the greater.

July 24.

After another unsuccessful search in the bight, to the eastward of Careening Bay, in which we fruitlessly examined a gully that Mr. Cunningham informed me had last year produced a considerable stream, we gave up all hopes of success here, and directed our attention to the cascade of Prince Regent’s River; which we entered the next afternoon, with the wind and tide in our favour, and at sunset reached an anchorage at the bottom of St. George’s Basin, a mile and a half to the northward of the islet that lies off the inner entrance of the river, in seven fathoms muddy sand.

July 26.

The following morning at half-past four o’clock Mr. Montgomery accompanied me in the whale-boat to visit the cascade; we reached it at nine o’clock and found the water, to our inexpressible satisfaction, falling abundantly.