This part of King Island is clothed with thick scrubs, among which we saw numerous tracks of kangaroos, a certain sign that it is not much frequented by civilized or uncivilized man.  Leaving this anchorage we examined the eastern shore of the island which we found, as I have before described, to be low and sandy.  Passing along two miles from it, we had a depth of from 8 to 12 and 15 fathoms.  As we approached the northern end, the character of the coast changed, it being formed by rocky points with small sand bays intervening.  The reef laid down by the French, two miles from the North-East extremity of the island, we found to be only half a mile South-South-West from it, one of the many errors we discovered in the French chart of the strait.  It is a small ugly ledge quite beneath the water, and from the absence of rocky points on the low sandy shore it fronts, is quite unlooked for.

NAVARIN AND HARBINGER ROCKS.

The next day, February 13th, we examined the dangers fronting the north side of the island, consisting of Navarin and Harbinger Rocks, neither of which we found so formidable or so far from the shore as had been reported.  The former lies only a mile and a half off the north end, and although we did not pass between it and the shore, there is little doubt that a passage exists.  We passed between the Harbinger rocks in 27 fathoms; this great depth in their immediate vicinity, gives no warning of their proximity in the night or during thick weather.

COMPLETE THE SURVEY OF PORT PHILLIP.

As it was now necessary for us to think of preparing for our return to the North coast, the proper season for passing through Torres Strait also approaching, and the increasing importance of Port Phillip, rendering it desirable to complete our survey of its entrance before our departure; we consequently proceeded thither.  We found even soundings of 53 fathoms extend twenty miles North by East from Harbinger Reef, but from thence northwards, the depths gradually decreased.  Calms and light winds rendered the passage across very tedious.  We spent one night at anchor in 31 fathoms near the entrance, about six miles south from Point Flinders, where the tide scarcely ran a knot an hour; the flood-stream set North-East.  With these operations closed our work in Bass Strait, for the present.  We had completed the western entrance from Port Western on the north shore and Circular Head on the south.  The weather had prevented our doing more, and obtaining as many soundings as we could have wished.  It had been unusually boisterous and unsettled, much more so than the winter generally is.  From all I could learn such a season had not been experienced in the memory of the oldest inhabitants.

March 1.