SEARCH FOR WATER.

A search was immediately made for the stream of fresh water reported to have been found by the French, in Freycinet’s voyage, on Depuch Island.  As our stock was now very much reduced, and as our stay on the coast depended on the supply we could procure here, we were greatly concerned to find that our examination was in vain.  Everything appeared parched up; wells were forthwith commenced, and we dug as many as eight, but at the depth of twenty-one feet the water that poured into them was salt.  Fortunately Mr. Bynoe found a reservoir of water in the main valley leading up from the north end of the sandy beach, and about a mile from the sea.  From this we got about six tons of tolerable water, although the labour of carrying it on the men’s shoulders in seven-gallon barecas was very great, the only road lying through the valley, which, as may be inferred from the rounded stones it is strewed with, sometimes conveys a torrent to the sea.  Large columnar blocks of the greenstone of which the island is composed, present, as the sun falls on their iron rusty surface, an appearance as if the sides of the valley were lined with red warriors.  The section presented to our view, by the deepest well we sank at the mouth of this valley, consisted of a light kind of mould for six feet, then a layer of sand and shells of the same depth, resting on a coarse soft kind of reddish sandstone.

FORESTIER GROUP.

Depuch is the centre of a string of islands which bears the name of Forestier Group, fronting the coast at the distance of from one to three miles.  It is much larger than the others, being about eight miles in circumference, and reaching an elevation of 514 feet; whereas the smaller islands, some of which are thickly covered with brushwood and coarse grass, are none of them above 50 feet high.  They are of a formation totally different, being of a very coarse gritty yellow sandstone, in many places quite honeycombed, with some low sandhills superimposed.

DEPUCH ISLAND.

Although Depuch Island is one vast pile of reddish-coloured blocks, scattered about in the greatest possible confusion, sometimes resembling basaltic columns, its outline from seaward appears even.  In the valleys, and on some of the more level spots near the summit, there are occasionally slight layers of soil, affording nourishment to a coarse grass, a few bushes, and several stunted eucalypti; but on the whole the vegetation of the island is extremely scanty.  From the highest point we had a view over the main, extending inland for a great distance.  It appeared to be flat, with the exception of some isolated rocky hills, of a formation similar to that of Depuch, from 200 to 500 feet in height, and about six miles from the shore.  We could also see at a distance of twenty-eight miles a very remarkable pyramidal hill, surmounted by a tower-like piece of rock, bearing from our position South 30 degrees West.  From the white appearance of many large patches of the level country, we inferred that they were covered with a salt efflorescence; and it is probable that a very great portion of it is occasionally flooded, being cut up by a number of creeks, which must overflow at spring tides, especially when they occur simultaneously with the north-west winds that prevail on this coast during the monsoon.