(Footnote.  See the view annexed.)

LIGHTHOUSE HILL.

In this wild and confined anchorage we were detained by constant westerly gales for a fortnight, during the whole of which there was only one really clear day, when I got angles to all the distant points from a hill near the south-east extreme of the group, nine hundred and ten feet high and quite precipitous on its seaward face.  We named it Lighthouse Hill, its admirably conspicuous situation suggesting the purpose to which it might be devoted; the materials for building, moreover, are all at hand.

DEAL ISLAND.

The principal islands of Kent Group have been named Deal and Erith; they occupy a square of four miles, and are separated by Murray Pass, a channel half a mile wide.  Conical granitic hills, in some cases clothed to their very summits with an impervious scrub, are scattered over them.  On Deal, the eastern isle, there are charred stumps of a few large eucalypti:  but otherwise the trees are small, the largest being a few casuarinas over the head of East Cove.  The valleys on the north side are rich; and in one leading from Garden Cove we found a quantity of fine carrots, planted by some sealers; their seed had been carried by the wind until the whole valley was filled with them; fresh water also is abundant on that side of Deal Island; and as limestone crops out at the head of East Cove, a small party of convicts might be kept here and advantageously employed in erecting the lighthouse and cultivating the soil.  By holding out to them a slight reward, many of the islands in Bass Strait might be brought under cultivation, and supply grain, potatoes, etc., for the consumption of the prisoners in Tasmania.  This plan of dispersing the convicts would also be beneficial in producing a change for the better in themselves; for whilst together they are certainly more likely to brood mischief.

ERITH ISLAND.

Besides East Cove there are others on the north-east and south-east sides of Deal Island; whilst on Erith there is only one called West Cove, in the north part of Murray Pass; it is subject to violent gusts that do not reach East Cove.

The formation of this group is a little singular, the calcareous limestone on Deal occurring two hundred feet above the sea and between granite; whilst on Erith vesicular lava was found.  These islands are connected with Flinders by a sand ridge, on which the depth is 28 and 30 fathoms; but the islets and rocks between would appear, from the evidence of upheaval we have just cited, to be elevated portions of a submerged piece of land about to disclose itself.*

(Footnote.  The observations on the tides at these islands make the time of high-water on the full and change of the moon a quarter past eleven, when it rises eight feet.  The stream in Murray Pass, which runs from two to five knots, changes to the northward twenty minutes after high-water.)