THE BLACK PYRAMID.

From stations on Hunter Island we were enabled to determine the positions of the numerous dangers fronting its west or seaward side, and also that of a dark mass of rock, 250 feet high, appropriately named the Black Pyramid, lying 16 miles West by North from the centre of the island, and in latitude 40 degrees 28 minutes South which places it nearly five miles south of its position in the old charts.  It is quite a finger-post to this entrance of the Strait, and all ships should pass close to it.  When I looked at these islands and rocks I could not help thinking of poor Captain Flinders and his enterprising companion Mr. Bass, the discoverers of the north-western part of Tasmania.  What a thrill of excitement must have shot through their frames when on rounding Hunter Island, in the little Norfolk cutter, they first felt the long swell of the ocean and became convinced of the insular character of Tasmania!  This discovery must have amply repaid them for all their toils and privations.  Nothing indeed is so calculated to fill the heart of the navigator with pride, as the consciousness that he has widened the sphere of geographical science, and added new seas and new lands to the known world.

The south end of Hunter Island is about three miles from a point of the mainland, called Woolnorth; but from the rocks and inlets that encumber the passage and the rapid rush of the tide it is only navigable for small vessels with great caution.  Point Woolnorth is a rather low sloping point composed of the same rock as Hunter Island.  Ten miles south of it a raised beach again occurs 100 feet above the level of the sea.  Behind Point Woolnorth the country swells into hills nearly six hundred feet high.  Three miles from its extreme is an out-station of the Van Diemen’s Land Agricultural Company, of which I shall say more anon.  Some forty persons are here located under the care of a German, who amused himself by making a large collection of insects, which he has since taken to Germany.  The soil on this extremity of Tasmania is most productive; but much labour is required in clearing for the purposes of cultivation.  From thence to Circular Head, bearing East 1/2 South 26 miles, the shore is low and sinuous, forming three shallow bights.

WALKER ISLAND.

Walker and Robbins islands, which lie together in the shape of an equilateral triangle, with sides of nine miles, front the coast about midway, and leave only a narrow boat-channel between them and the main.

On Walker Island our boats met the wives of some sealers whose husbands had gone to King Island on a sealing excursion.  They were clothed like those on New Year Island.  One was half European and half Tasmanian, and by no means ill-looking; she spoke very good English and appeared to take more care of her person than her two companions, who were aborigines of pure blood.  A few wild flowers were tastefully entwined with her hair, which was dressed with some pretensions to elegance.  They had a pack of dogs along with them, and depended in a great measure for their maintenance on the Wallaby they killed.  The skin also of these animals constitutes to them an important article of trade.