Leaving Twofold Bay upon a favourable shift of wind, the sloop proceeded to the southward, and on the 17th made a small cluster of islands, in latitude 38 degrees 16 minutes, which now bears the name of Kent’s Group (a compliment to the commander of his Majesty’s ship Supply).  These are six or seven in number, and of various sizes.  Their height is very considerable, and as irregular in figure as can well be imagined in land whose hummocks are no one of them more lofty than another.  This small group appears to be formed of granite, which is imperfectly concealed by long straggling dwarfish brush, and some few still more diminutive trees, and seems cursed with a sterility that might safely bid defiance to Chinese industry itself.  Nature is either working very slowly with those islands, or has altogether ceased to work upon them, since a more wild deserted place is not easily to be met with.  Even the birds seemed not to frequent them in their usual numbers.  There was, in short, nothing that could tempt our explorers to land.

Having passed Kent’s Group standing to the southward, the next morning Furneaux’s Islands were in sight, and on the following day they anchored at Preservation Island, which is one of them.  These islands, from what was seen of them during this run along their shore, and what had been seen of them before by Mr. Bass, appear to consist of two kinds, perfectly dissimilar in figure, and most probably of very unequal ages, but alike in the materials of which they are formed.  Both kinds are of granite; but the one is low, and rather level, with a soil of sand covered with low brush and tufted grass:  the other is remarkably high, bold, and rocky, and cut into a variety of singular peaks and knobs.  Some little vegetable soil lies upon these, and the vegetation is large; trees even of a tolerable size are produced in some places.  There are attached to some parts of these high islands slips of low sandy land, of a similar height with the lower islands, and probably coeval with them.

Preservation Island, which takes its respectable name from having preserved the crew of the ship Sydney Cove, arranges itself in the humble class of islands, and is of a very moderate height.  A surface of sand, varying in depth, and mixed in different scanty proportions with vegetable soil, scarcely hides from view the base, which is of granite.  In several places vast blocks of this stone lie scattered about, as free from vegetation and the injuries of weather as if they had fallen but yesterday:  and, what is remarkable, most of them, probably all, are evidently detached from the stone upon which they rest, so entirely that they might be dragged from the places where they lie, if it were thought worth while to apply a power sufficient to produce so useless an effect.  It should seem then that these loose blocks have fallen from some place higher than that upon which they were found; but that is impossible, for they are higher than any other part of the island.  And the supposition that the injuries of the air and the rain caused the removal of that part of the granite which might originally have been of a corresponding height with these remaining blocks, seems hardly admissible in the present instance.  Perhaps subterraneous or volcanic fire may have caused this curious appearance.