CAPTURE MANY TURTLES.

We remained at this anchorage for the two following days, during which time the weather was generally gloomy and unsettled, with occasional heavy rain.  As numerous recent tracks of turtles upon the sandy beach indicated that the season had not yet ended, parties were sent on shore to watch for them after dark, and although only one was taken on the first night, yet on the following not less than eighteen were secured and brought off:  fifteen of them were of the green, and three of the hawksbill kind.  The last, I believe, is undescribed:  it is certainly not the one (Caretta imbricata) producing the greater part of the tortoise-shell of commerce, and which is not rare in Torres Strait, distinguished by having the posterior angle of each dorsal plate projecting, so as to give a serrated appearance to the margin of the carapace which, in the present species is quite smooth.  The green turtle averaged 350 pounds each, and the hawksbills about 250 pounds.  Although a strong prejudice existed against the hawksbill as an article of food, we all found reason to change our minds, and pronounce it to be at least equal to the other.  The newly-hatched turtles (all hawksbills) were running about in every direction, and among their numerous enemies, I was surprised to see a burrowing crab (Ocypoda cursor) which runs with great swiftness along the sandy beaches.  These crabs even carried off a plover which I had shot, not allowing more than ten minutes to elapse before one of them had it safely (as it thought) stowed away in its burrow.

The golden plover was plentiful on the island during our visit, and one afternoon I killed fifteen in about an hour.  Two days after the terns’ eggs had been broken we found a small colony of laying birds, and picked up some dozens of eggs; and had we remained a few days longer, doubtless a very great number might have been procured.  The weed which in the Fly we used to call spinach (a species of Boerhaavia, apparently B. diffusa) being abundant here, was at my suggestion collected in large quantity for the use of the ship’s company as a vegetable, but it did not seem to be generally liked.

December 21st.

Two days ago we left Bramble Cay for Cape Possession in New Guinea, with a fine breeze from the North-West, and next morning at daylight saw the land about the Cape on the weather-beam.  The wind, however, died away in the afternoon, but this morning a light north-westerly breeze sprang up, before which we bore up and were brought in the afternoon to an anchorage in 11 fathoms, mud, half a mile to leeward of the Pariwara Islands.

ARRIVE AT REDSCAR BAY.

Meanwhile Lieutenant Yule, upon our destination being changed, was ordered by signal to proceed to Cape Direction and survey the intermediate space between that and Redscar Bay, in order to connect his former continuation of the Fly’s work with ours, and thus complete the coastline of the whole of the south-east part of New Guinea.