from our anchorage North by West 1/2 West, carried us a little more than a mile west of the Hope Islands.  Had their assigned position in the chart been correct, our course would have led us right over the western isle.  On detecting this error, we found it necessary to re-survey this part of the coast, and it affords me much pleasure, after so doing, to be able to bear testimony to the extreme correctness of Captain King’s original chart above alluded to.  Soon after passing the Hope Islands, we saw the reef where Cook’s vessel had so miraculous an escape, after grinding on the rocks for 23 hours, as graphically described in his voyages.  It is called Endeavour Reef, from this circumstance.

CAPE BEDFORD.

Continuing on the same course, we passed three miles from Cape Bedford, at 4 P.M.  This is one of the most remarkable features on the coast, being a bluff detached piece of tableland, surmounted by a singular low line of cliffs, reminding me forcibly of the lava-capped hills on the river Santa Cruz, in eastern Patagonia.  As far as I could judge, by the aid of a good glass, it seemed to be composed of a mixture of red sand and ironstone, of a very deep red hue, bearing a great similarity to the country on the North-West coast, in latitude 15 1/4 degrees South.

Leaving Cape Bedford, we went in search of a shoal laid down by H.M.S.  Victor, as lying two miles to the West-South-West of Three Isles.  Both Captain King and Lieutenant Roe had expressed a doubt of its existence in the position marked, a doubt which our researches fully justified; and therefore, as it at present stands, it should be expunged from the chart.  From thence we steered north for Lizard Island, the remarkable peak on which soon rose in sight; this course took us within three miles of Cape Flattery, where a couple of peaks, with a slope between them, render it a conspicuous headland.

About seven miles west from thence, there is a strange alteration in the appearance of the country, changing from moderately high conical-shaped hills, to lofty table ranges about 500, or 600 feet in height, trending about South-West and by West.

LIZARD ISLAND.

Having still a little moonlight, we were enabled to keep underweigh part of the night, and during the first watch came to in 13 fathoms, in a bay on the west side of Lizard Island, the extremes bearing from South 1/2 East to East-North-East.  During the day we experienced a northerly current, varying from three quarters to half an knot an hour.

July 3.

We remained at this anchorage, until the following morning, for the purpose of determining the position of the island, and of visiting the peak, which we found to be nearly twelve hundred feet high.  I ascended by a slope rising from the shore of the small bay where our observations were taken, and which may be easily distinguished, from being the second from the north point of the island.  Their result was to place it in latitude 14 degrees 40 3/4 minutes South longitude 13 degrees 17 3/4 minutes East of Port Essington.  Variation by the mean of five or six needles was 7 3/4 degrees East being half a degree more than it was at Cape Upstart.  Other magnetic observations were also made, consisting of those for the dip and intensity.