A kind of bustard, with a very strong bill, and not larger than a hen, was numerous at Bountiful Island; and appeared to subsist upon the young turtle.  The effect of instinct is admirable in all cases, and was very striking in these little amphibious creatures.  When scratched out from their holes, they no sooner saw the day light than they made for the water, and with speed, as if conscious that the bustards were watching them; when placed in a direction from the sea, which was done for experiment, they turned themselves and took the straightest course to the water side.  But it is not only in the bustards, nor on land alone, that they have enemies to fear; tiger sharks were numerous. and so voracious, that seven were hooked along-side the ship, measuring from five to nine feet in length.  These were ready to receive such of the little animals as escape their first enemies; and even one of the full grown turtle had lost a semi circular piece, equal to the tenth part of its bulk, which had been bitten out of its side; and what seemed more extraordinary, the shell had closed, and the place was healed up.  Were it not for the immense destruction made of these animals in the different stages of their existence, and that food must in the end fail, their fecundity is such, that all the tropical seas and shores would scarcely afford room for them in a few years.  The number of eggs found in the females, and there were few, if any males amongst the forty-six taken here, usually ran from four to seven hundred; and in one weighing 459 lbs, taken earlier in the following season, the number of eggs counted was 1940, as recorded in lieutenant Fowler’s journal; but many were not bigger, some not so large as peas.  They seem to lay from twenty to a hundred eggs at once, and this is done many times in the season; after which they go very little on shore.  In Terra Australis, the season appears to commence in August, and to terminate in January or February.

The latitude of our anchorage, one mile from the south-east side of Bountiful Island, was 16 deg. 41’ south.  Lieutenant Flinders observed six sets of lunar distances, which gave 139 deg. 46’ 18” east longitude; but the time keeper No. 543 made it 141/2’ east of Inspection Hill, or in 139 deg. 591/2’.  The variation of the compass, from azimuth and amplitude observed with the ship’s head in the magnetic meridian, was 3 deg. 46’ east; and at my station on shore, an amplitude with the theodolite gave 3 deg. 47’ east.  From a little past ten in the morning to eleven at night, the tide ran half a mile an hour to the S. W., and N. E. during the remainder of the twenty-four hours; the first, which seemed to be the flood, was only three hours after the moon, above six hours earlier than in the Investigator’s Road; but the time of high water by the shore might be very different:  no greater rise than five feet was perceivable by the lead line.

SUNDAY 5 DECEMBER 1802