The mount upon which I stood is the highest part of a ridge of almost bare granite, extending along, or rather forming the west side of Middle Island.  The other parts of the island are low, and thickly covered with brush wood and some trees, where a small species of kangaroo seemed to be numerous, though none were caught.  In the north-eastern part was a small lake of a rose colour, the water of which, as I was informed by Mr. Thistle who visited it, was so saturated with salt that sufficient quantities were crystallised near the shores to load a ship.  The specimen he brought on board was of a good quality, and required no other process than drying to be fit for use.  This lake is at the back of the easternmost of three small beaches on the north side of the island, and it might be concluded that the salt was formed by the evaporation of the water oozing through the bank which separates it from the sea; but as, in the small drainings from the hills, the water was too salt to be drinkable, this may admit of a doubt.

SATURDAY 16 JANUARY 1802

On Saturday morning a part of the people were employed cutting a boat load of fire wood, and the master was again sent to sound the passage out to the eastward, and amongst the rocks lying beyond it.  The shallowest depth he found was 3 fathoms, after which the water deepened to 7 and 10, past the north-east point and out to sea.  He landed upon some of the rocky islets, and brought from thence twenty-seven more geese, some of them alive.  The botanical gentlemen employed the day in going round Middle Island, but they found very little to reward their labour.  A piece of fir plank, with nails in it, which seemed to have been part of a ship’s deck, was picked up on the shore; but no trace of the island having been visited, either by Europeans or the natives of the main land, was any where seen.

The basis stone of this, as it appears to be of all the islands as well as of the coast of the archipelago, is granitic; but at the south side of Middle Island there is a thick crust of calcareous rock over it, as there is at the south end of Goose Island.  It was also on the south side of King George’s Sound that the calcareous rock covered the granite; a coincidence which may perhaps afford some light to the geologist.

The latitude of Goose Island Bay, for so this anchorage was named, is 34 deg. 5’ 23” south, and longitude by the two best time keepers corrected 123 deg. 9’ 30",5 east; the observations being made on the middlemost of the three southern beaches.

The variation from azimuth, observed on the binnacle when the ship’s head was west-south-west, was 0 deg. 54’ west, and in the following year similar observations taken at anchor one mile to the eastward, with the head east, gave 6 deg. 10’ west; whence I deduce the variation which would have been obtained with the head at north or south, to be 3 deg. 25’ west.  From the bearings on shore, compared with the latitudes and longitudes, it appeared to be 51/4 deg. on the centre of Goose Island; and 4 deg. upon the granitic mount of Middle Island.