Crossing Banks Strait we anchored under Preservation Island, lying between the western extreme of Clarke and Barren Islands; it owes its name to the preservation of the crew of a ship run ashore upon it in a sinking state.  The value of the shelter this anchorage affords is in some measure destroyed by the presence of a sandbank extending off three miles from the eastern side of Preservation Island.  Two small rocky islets lie a mile and a half off the western side of the latter, and several ugly rocks are scattered along the face of Barren Island, and as far as Chappell Group; on the outer isle of this group, which is low and level, the lighthouse bearing North 60 degrees West fifteen miles and a half forms a very conspicuous object, and is visible to the eye in clear weather from the top of Preservation Island.  Over the northern point of the latter, towers the summit of Barren Island, forming a sort of double mount 2300 feet high.

STRAITSMEN.

I found Preservation Island inhabited by an old sealer of the name of James Monro, generally known as the King of the Eastern Straitsmen.  Another man and three or four native women completed the settlement, if such a term may be applied.  They lived in a few rude huts on a bleak flat, with scarce a tree near, but sheltered from the west by some low granite hills; a number of dogs, goats and fowls constituted their livestock.  In this desolate place Monro had been for upwards of twenty-three years; and many others have lived in similar situations an equally long period.  It is astonishing what a charm such a wild mode of existence possesses for these men, whom no consideration could induce to abandon their free, though laborious and somewhat lawless state.

The term sealers is no longer so appropriate as it was formerly; none of them confining themselves to sealing, in consequence of the increasing scarcity of the object of their original pursuit.  Straitsmen is the name by which those who inhabit the eastern and western entrance of Bass Strait are known; they class themselves into Eastern and Western Straitsmen, and give the following account of their origin:  Between the years 1800 and 1805, the islands in Bass Strait and those fronting the south coast of Australia, as far westward as the Gulfs of St. Vincent and Spencer were frequented by sealing vessels from the old and the new country, if I may use this expression for England and Australia.  Many of their crews became so attached to the islands they were in the habit of visiting, that when their vessels were about to leave the neighbourhood, they preferred to remain, taking with them a boat and other stores as payment for their work.  There can be no doubt, however, that their numbers were afterwards recruited by runaway convicts.

NATIVE WIVES.