(Footnote.  Lowendal Island, bearing east, leads into it.)

(**Footnote.  We recognised them from a sketch furnished by the Admiralty, and made in 1719 by a Dutch sloop sent in search of them from Batavia.  They placed them eight degrees west from the coast of New Holland.  If we take leagues instead of degrees it would bring them near their actual distance from the shore.  Van Keulen says they were seen in the ship Vaderland Getrouw, and found to be in 20 degrees 30 seconds south.  In 1777 they were seen by Captain Joss, of the Danish ship Frederisberg Castel, who places them in 20 degrees 40 minutes South.  It was by his description that I recognised them beyond a doubt, although his longitude would place them thirteen degrees more to the westward, and near the position they have occupied for years in the charts.  The centre of them bears North by East five miles and a quarter from Cape Dupuis, the north-west point of Barrow’s Island.)

NEW KANGAROO.

We found a new kind of kangaroo and wallaby on Barrow’s Island; but the only specimen obtained of the former was destroyed through the neglect of the person in whose charge it was left.  It was a buck, weighing fifty pounds, of a cinnamon colour on the back and a dirty white on the belly; the hair was fine and long; the head of a peculiar shape, resembling a dog’s, with a very blunt nose; the forearms were very short; the hind feet cushioned like those inhabiting rocky ground.  The does appeared to be much lighter; but all were very wary and scarce.  From the number of red sandhills, too, scattered over the island, they were difficult to be seen at a distance.  From our description of this specimen it has been named Osphranter isabellinus.  With the wallaby we were more fortunate, Mr. Bynoe and myself succeeding in knocking over four, weighing from five to eight pounds; they also had blunt noses, and were of a light brown colour, quite different from those on the Abrolhos.

Two iguanas, measuring seven feet in length, and nearly black, striped slightly with white, were also killed here.

We did not find any surface water; everything wore a dry parched appearance.  No traces of natives were discovered, except some charred pieces of wood.  Indeed I may remark that we saw signs of fire on every part of the continent we visited.  From the south extremity of the island a long reef trended in the direction of the mainland, where Captain King traced it extending off some distance, thus connecting with the shore the whole of these islands, which seem to lie in a line with each other, like the various parts of a submerged piece of land.  The small isles, especially between the Montebello Group and Barrow’s Island, have all the same direction; so that it seems fair to conclude that they were once a part of the main, being in fact fragments of a promontory, forming a gulf similar to Exmouth Gulf, lying on the south-west of it.  I had been led to expect this from the fact of our finding the flood-stream coming from the north-east, whereas the direction of it in the offing is North-North-West.