April 11.

We left with the first streak of dawn, and pursued our course to the southward, passing inside a small reef lying half a mile west from Eagle Point.  The eastern shore now took a South by West direction, forming shallow bights, flanked by hills of moderate elevation; our next station was an islet at the head of Collier Bay, bearing South-South-West 1/2 West 15 miles from Eagle Point:  it was in the mouth of a shoal bay about three miles deep in a West-South-West direction, the shores of which were lined with mangroves and overlooked by a high rocky ridge.  The width of Collier Bay, at its entrance 20 miles, was here only six.

NARROW INLET.

The western shore ran in a North-West by West direction, a straight rocky coast, over which rose abruptly a range of barren heights.  The tide stream gradually weakened as we approached the head of the bay, where it scarcely exceeded half a knot, and the soundings decreased to seven fathoms, with a kind of muddy sand bottom; but the clearness of the water, and the equal duration of the flood and ebb streams, afforded the most conclusive evidence of the small opening we now discovered in the South-East corner of the bay being nothing more than an inlet.  It bore from this islet East-South-East four miles, yet as a drowning man catches at a straw, so did we at this inlet, and were soon in the entrance, which we found to be half a mile wide, with a very strong tide rushing out.  After some difficulty we landed on a high rocky island in the mouth of it, the summit of which afforded us a good view of the inlet, which within the entrance widened out and was about two miles deep.  A point prevented our seeing the eastern extreme, which Mr. Helpman was sent to examine; he found it extended two miles in an East-North-East direction, and like the other parts of it, to be lined with a scanty growth of mangroves, and flanked by high rocky land.  The shape of this inlet resembles that of a bottle with a broad base, and being subject to a tidal change of level of 36 feet, it is easy to imagine with what violence such a body of water must rush through the narrow entrance to keep on a level with the slow-moving waters of the bay outside.  The cause of this great rise of tide in the head of Collier Bay, may be attributed to there being no escape for the vast body of water flowing into it.  The land over the depth of this inlet which I have before spoken of, as being barren rocky heights, bounded our view to the southward; it bore South-South-East three miles, and lies in latitude 16 degrees 25 minutes South and longitude 124 degrees 25 minutes East being the farthest point we determined towards the centre of the continent.  The extreme position reached in that direction by Lieutenant Lushington of Lieutenant Grey’s expedition, bears from this point, North 64 degrees East fifty miles.  Thus terminated our explorations in Collier Bay, and although we had not the good fortune to find it the outlet of some large opening leading into the interior, still we succeeded in setting at rest the speculation, such a deep indentation of the coastline had hitherto afforded, and increased our geographical knowledge of this part of the continent 35 miles.