On the three preceding days many tacks had been made from the shore, and I had frequently taken bearings just before the helm was put down; and so soon as the ship was round and the compass steady, they were again taken.  Differences always took place; and without any exception the bearings required a greater allowance of variation to the right after tacking, when the head was westward, than before, when eastward; agreeing with the differences so frequently found in the azimuths and amplitudes, which had always been to show a greater east or less west variation when the head was on the west side of the meridian.  The least average difference in any one of five sets of bearings was 5 deg., the greatest 61/2 deg., and the mean 5 deg. 54’; and according to the system adopted in correcting the variations, explained in the Appendix No.  II. to the second volume, the mean difference arising from the five changes in the direction of the ship’s head, should be 5 deg. 33’.

The eastern wind died away at noon of the 16th, and the ship scarcely had steerage way until after midnight; a breeze then sprung up from the north-westward, and we steered north-east to make the land near Cape Buffon.  At half-past seven [SATURDAY 17 APRIL 1802] the cape bore N. 1 deg.  W. seven miles, and was ascertained to be in nearly 37 deg. 36’ south and 140 deg. 10’ east.  There is a bight in the coast on its north side where the land was not distinctly seen all round, owing probably to its being a low beach.  At nine o’clock we bore away southward, keeping at the distance of two or three miles from the shore.  It was the same kind of hummock-topped bank as before described; but a ridge of moderately high hills, terminated to the southward by a bluff, was visible over it, three or four leagues inland; and there was a reef of rocks lying in front of the shore.  At noon, two larger rocks were seen at the southern end of the reef, and are those called by the French the Carpenters.  They lie one or two miles from a sandy projection named by them Cape Boufflers; and here a prior title to discovery interferes.

On arriving at Port Jackson I learned, and so did captain Baudin, that this coast had been before visited.  Lieutenant (now captain) James Grant, commander of His Majesty’s brig Lady Nelson, saw the above projection, which he named Cape Banks, on Dec. 3, 1800; and followed the coast from thence through Bass Strait.* The same principle upon which I had adopted the names applied by the French navigators to the parts discovered by them will now guide me in making use of the appellations bestowed by captain Grant.

[* See A Voyage in the Lady Nelson to New South Wales, by James Grant.  London, 1803.  This voyage was published four years previously to M. Peron’s book; but no more attention was paid at Paris to captain Grant’s rights than to mine; his discoveries, though known to M. Peron and the French expedition in 1802, being equally claimed and named by them.]