MONDAY 4 JANUARY 1802

On the 4th a fresh gale blew from the westward and prevented me from moving the ship.  A bottle, containing a parchment to inform future visitors of our arrival and intention to sail on the morrow, was left upon the top of Seal Island; and the wind having moderated next day, and the weather become finer, though still squally, we then made sail out of King George’s Sound to prosecute the further examination of the coast.

TUESDAY 5 JANUARY 1802

The refreshments we had procured were fish and oysters.  The seine was frequently hauled upon the different beaches; but although it was done in the evening, round fires which had been previously kindled, little success was obtained in this way.  With hook and line we were more fortunate, both alongside and from boats stationed off the rocky points; and the whole ship’s company had generally a fresh meal once in three or four days.  Of oysters, as many were taken from the shoals in both harbours as we chose to spare time for gathering.  Our fire wood was procured from the north point of entrance to Princess-Royal Harbour, at the inner end of the long middle beach; but the trees best calculated for sawing into planks were obtained at the easternmost of the two woody projections on the south side of the harbour.  A good number of planks and logs were taken on board for making garden boxes to contain the most curious plants collected by the naturalist, and for a variety of other purposes.  The fresh water, procured by digging near the tents, was a little discoloured, but good; and it was sufficiently abundant for every purpose:  its specific gravity was 1.003 at the temperature of 69 deg..

Captain Vancouver has described the country in the neighbourhood of King George’s Sound, and therefore a few observations upon it will suffice.  The basis stone is granite, which frequently shows itself at the surface in the form of smooth, bare rock; but upon the seacoast hills, and the shores on the south sides of the Sound and Princess-Royal Harbour, the granite is generally covered with a crust of calcareous stone; as it is, also, upon Michaelmas Island.  Captain Vancouver mentions (Vol.  I. p. 49) having found upon the top of Bald Head, branches of coral protruding through the sand, exactly like those seen in the coral beds beneath the surface of the sea; a circumstance which should seem to bespeak this country to have emerged from the ocean at no very distant period of time.  This curious fact I was desirous to verify; and his description was proved to be correct.  I found, also, two broken columns of stone three or four feet high, formed like stumps of trees and of a thickness superior to the body of a man; but whether they were of coral or of wood now petrified, or whether they might not have been calcareous rocks worn into that particular form by the weather, I cannot determine.  Their elevation above the present level of the sea could not have been less than four hundred feet.