The daylight found us all anxiously speculating upon the probable results to be accomplished before the darkness once more closed in upon us, but the morning being perfectly calm, we were compelled to wait till the flood-tide made:  this soon took us past an island four miles from the eastern shore, seen the evening before, and which now proved to be a narrow strip, covered with the never-failing mangrove; and having two smaller islands, nearly identical in character, lying two miles south of it.  We passed them at noon, and saw the land to the westward, our position being then 20 miles south of Point Torment.  The water had shoaled in several places during the passage to less than a fathom (low-water); but the tide hemmed in by the contraction of this great inlet (the left shore of which gradually trending to the eastward, here approached to within six miles of the opposite coast) still hurried us on with a rapidity agreeable enough but not quite free from danger, towards what appeared to be the mouth of a large river.  If our exultation had been great in the morning, when such success as this was only half anticipated, what was it at that exciting moment when the eventful hour which should give us the triumph of such a discovery as that we now fairly anticipated, seemed within our grasp?  I cannot answer for others, but for myself I had never known a sensation of greater delight.  Doubt, disappointment, difficulty, and danger; all, all were unheeded or forgotten in the one proud thought that for us was reserved an enterprise the ultimate results of which might in some future year affect the interests of a great portion of the world!  Presently, as if to recall to their routine of duty, these upward-springing thoughts, the boats were found to be rapidly carried by the stream towards an extensive flat, which appeared to extend right across the opening towards which all eyes had been turned with so much eagerness, and over which the tide was boiling and whirling with great force.  To attempt to cross would have been madness; there was nothing, therefore, to be done but patiently await the rising of the tide.

ESCAPE POINT.

The nearest land, a mangrove point bearing South-South-East one mile, we afterwards named Escape Point, in grateful memory of the providential escapes we experienced in its vicinity.  Where the boats were anchored we had nearly five feet at low-water, and the tide ran past them at the rate of five miles an hour.  As soon as possible we again started, in a south by west direction, and proceeded for about five miles, when the boats were anchored, near the western shore, which we proposed to visit at low-water.  From the yawl’s masthead I traced the shore all round, except to the south-east, where I could see an opening about a mile wide.  The western land was slightly elevated, perhaps to 70 feet, and clothed with rather large trees, while to the eastward the land appeared very low.  As the tide ebbed, we found, to our disappointment and mortification, that the flat over which we reckoned to secure a passage to the mainland, never became quite dry (the tide here falling only 18 feet) while from its soft and treacherous character, it was impossible to cross it on foot.