(Footnote.  This was doubtless Champion Bay; but in our examination of the coast, we did not see anything of the bay or harbour which Captain Grey speaks of in his work (volume 2 page 35) about nine miles north of the Greenough, and which he supposed to be Champion Bay, “since denominated,” he says, “Port Grey.”  According to the true latitude of Champion Bay, the bay in question would be in about 28 degrees 38 minutes South or nearly twenty-two miles north of the position assigned to Port Grey in Arrowsmith’s map, before alluded to.)

Thus terminated our exploration of this part of the country, called, by Captain Grey, the Province of Victoria; and certainly all we had seen of it deserved the character of sterility, which in some measure it appears to retain further northward, as we learn from the report of Lieutenant Helpman, who has recently visited it in the colonial schooner Champion.  We did not, on our route, fall in with any native, but on reaching the boat, found that a party of five men had approached the beach, and held friendly communication with Mr. Pasco, who, in exchange for a handkerchief or two, had obtained from them a hunger belt, composed of wallaby furs, a throwing stick, and a nose-piece of kangaroo bone.  They were entirely naked, and slightly scarred, but were not smeared with the red pigment called wilgy, and had their hair knotted upon the crown of their head, like the natives of the neighbourhood of King’s Sound.

SAIL FROM CHAMPION BAY.

On the morning of the 16th we were again on our way southwards, with, strange to say at that season of the year, westerly winds, which prevailed for the three succeeding days.

KOOMBANAH BAY.

After touching at Swan River (where, finding His Excellency the Governor still absent, an account of our cruise was left with the Surveyor-General) we reached Koombanah Bay on the 27th.  Mr. Forsyth, whom I had sent overland, had completed the survey of this anchorage, and Leschenault Inlet, which it joins in the south corner by a narrow boat channel.  The wreck of a large whale ship in the head of the bay shows the folly of attempting to ride out the winter gales to which it is exposed; but this may be remedied by a breakwater thrown out from Point Casuarina, of which nature has laid the foundation in the reef that extends out across the bay in the desired direction.  The strong outset from the estuary during the rainy season materially lessens the strain upon the cables of ships caught there by a gale.  The peculiarity in the formation of this neighbourhood consists in some basaltic columns on the coast close to Point Casuarina.

We devoted the 28th to making observations,* etc.; and I was surprised to find that this part of the coast was laid down four miles too much to the northward.