(Footnote.  The observations on the tides at this place make the time of high-water at the full and change days 1 hour 10 minutes, when the rise is 8 feet.  The stream in the main channel runs upwards of 2 knots, and off the North-East end of Grant Island it makes to the eastward about two hours before the time of high-water; this difference is to be attributed to the flood entering round both ends of the island.)

From Port Western we carried a line of soundings across the Strait to Circular Head,* the greatest depth midway between being 40 fathoms.  Here, according to arrangement, we met the Vansittart.  Bad weather had prevented Mr. Forsyth from completing the work allotted the cutter.  We found the management of the Van Diemen’s Land Agricultural Company in the hands of Mr. Gibson, from whom we received great attention.  The new system of letting lands, recently adopted by this Company, was working well; and it certainly appeared to be a very fair mode of getting their lands occupied.

DIRECTIONS FOR THE WESTERN ENTRANCE OF BASS STRAIT.

(Footnote.  My intention of getting some more soundings in the western entrance of Bass Strait was frustrated; but as I have entered into detail respecting the eastern entrance, I am induced to devote some space to a few directions, which may aid in averting a repetition of such terrible catastrophes as the late wreck of the Cataraqui on the western side of King Island.  The western entrance, formed by the islands off the north-west point of Tasmania and the projection on the Australian continent called Cape Otway, is 108 miles wide.  King Island, lying nearly midway, occupies 35 miles of this space, and leaves to the north of it a passage of 47 miles in width, and to the south one of 37 miles.  The latter, however, is impeded by Reid’s Rocks, the Conway and Bell sunken rocks, with Albatross Island and the Black Pyramid; the tide also sets across it at the rate of from one to three knots, as I have already mentioned in the first volume; consequently, the entrance between King Island and Cape Otway is much safer, the chief danger being the Harbinger Rocks, two granite boulders, with deep water between, one lying North 74 degrees West three miles and a half, and the other North 88 degrees West, nearly four miles and a half from the north point of King Island, Cape Wickham, which may be recognized by a round hill, 595 feet high, over it.  The southern Harbinger is a few feet only out of the water, and the other scarcely awash.  These, with the Navarin Rock, lying North 25 degrees West, one mile and a half from the same cape, and the reef lying half a mile off Cape Otway, constitute the sole dangers in this entrance.