Page:A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2.djvu/139

Gulph of Carpentaria.]

be a full mile in width; but a spit from the south side runs so far across, that there is probably no access to it, unless for rowing boats: its latitude is 15° 12′ south, corresponding with a bight in the Dutch chart to the south of the second Water Plaets; and the variation, with the ship's head in the meridian, was 4° 43′ east. Our course southward was continued at two or three miles from the shore, in 3 to 4 fathoms; but at eleven o'clock, the sea breeze having then set in, the depth diminished suddenly to 2 fathoms; and in tacking, the ship stirred up the mud.

The latitude at noon was 15° 25′ 20″, and longitude 141° 32′; at one o'clock we steered S.S.W., with the whale boat a-head, and carried from 4 to 6 fathoms until seven in the evening, when the stream anchor was dropped about four miles from the shore, in 5 fathoms, muddy bottom. This depth had diminished at daylight to 3¾ fathoms, after a tide had been setting nine hours to the N. by E.; and for the first time upon this coast it had run with some strength, the rate being one mile an hour.

We were again under way soon after five o'clock; and at six, being then four miles from the land, and steering S.S.W., a lagoon was seen from the mast head, over the front beach. It has doubtless some communication with the sea, either by a constant, or a temporary opening, but none such could be perceived. The latitude 15° 53′ corresponds with that of Nassau River in the old chart; and from the examples already had of the Dutch rivers here, it seems probable that this lagoon was meant. A few miles further south, the shoal water obliged me to run westward, out of sight of land from the deck; and even at the mast head, the tops of the trees were only partially distinguished; yet the depth was no more than from 4 to 6 fathoms. At noon, when our latitude was 16° 24′ 29 and longitude 141° 14½′, trees were visible from the deck at N. 70° E., and from thence to S. 50° E.; the nearest part, whence a smoke arose, being distant seven or eight miles, and the depth of water 4 fathoms. The slight projection here is probably one of those marked in the old