January 22.

The next morning fifty turtles were turned, but as we could not convey them all on board forty were left on shore upon their backs for the night:  upon landing the next morning they were all found dead, having killed themselves by their exertions to escape, and from their exposure to the heat of the sun which was so great during the day that I did not send any of the people on shore.  We found, however, no difficulty in procuring more, some of which weighed four hundredweight.

The shore of this bay is fronted by a rocky reef covered with shell-fish, of which the principal sorts were species of trochus, chama, conus, voluta, cypraea, buccinum, ostrea, mytilus, and patella; among the latter was the large one of King George’s Sound.  Upon the beaches to windward of the cape we found varieties of sponge and coral; and beche de mer were observed in the crevices of the rocks but were neither large nor plentiful.  Mr. Cunningham saw two land snakes, one of which was about four feet in length; the colour of its back was black and the belly yellow; the only quadruped seen was a small opossum.  A seal of the hair species, like those of Rottnest Island, was seen on the rocks, probably of the same description that Dampier found in the maw of the shark;* and also what was found by the French on Faure Island, which M. Peron supposed to be an herbivorous animal and described as a dugong.**

(Footnote.  Dampier volume 3 page 87.)

(**Footnote.  Peron volume 2 page 227 et seq and De Freycinet page 201.)

January 24.

On the 24th Mr. Roe visited the Cape to fix on the post a memorial of our visit; an inscription was carved upon a small piece of wood in the back of which was deposited another memorandum written upon vellum; the wood was of the size of the sheave-hole of the larger post, into which it was fixed, and near it Mr. Roe piled up a heap of stones.  After this was accomplished the party walked for some distance along the beach to the south-west of the cape, where they found the remains of two or three whales that had been lately wrecked; a small piece of putrefied flesh was also seen, about two or three feet long, one side of which was covered with red hair, it was however too far gone to ascertain to what animal it belonged.

On examining into the state of our dry provisions it was mortifying to find that the rats and cockroaches had destroyed an incredible quantity, particularly of our biscuit and flour.  In one of the casks of the latter more than two-thirds of its contents was deficient.  The biscuit was completely drilled through and the greater part would not have been thought fit to eat if we had possessed any of a better quality; I still however hoped to have a sufficiency on board to complete the survey of the north-west coast before our return to Port Jackson, which I now found would of necessity be at least four or five weeks before the time I had fixed upon when we left the Mauritius.