Page:A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 1.djvu/304

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S. 72° W., between two and three miles from it. The island is low, smooth, and sterile, and is frequented by seals; its latitude is 34° 6′ and longitude 120° 28′, and it lies eight or nine miles from the main land.

At noon, the rocky island was near ten miles astern, and a cluster of four small islets appeared in the offing at the distance of four leagues. The nearest part of the main land, seven or eight miles distant, was low and sandy, as it had been all the way from East Mount Barren, and continued to be to the furthest extreme visible from the mast head; there were, however, a few scattered sandy hillocks on the shore, but nothing could be seen of the back country. Our situation, and the bearings taken at this time were as under: We passed at nearly an equal distance between the four rocky islets and the main land, that is to say, at six or eight miles from each; and at five o'clock were abreast of a projecting part of the coast, where the sandy hills seemed to form white cliffs. This is called Cap des Basses (Shoal Cape) in the French chart; and we saw, in fact, an islet under the land, surrounded with much broken water, and the soundings decreased from 35 to 25 fathoms soon after passing it at the distance of five or six miles. There was an appearance of small inlets on each side of Shoal Cape, but as admiral D'Entrecasteaux passed within three miles and does not mark any, it was probably a deception, caused by the land being very low between the sand hills.

Before sunset, the westernmost isle of D'Entrecasteaux's Archipel de la Recherche was in sight to the eastward, and at half past seven, our distance from it was about six miles. The French