Page:A voyage to New Holland - Dampier.djvu/182

 like islands, as really they are. See several sights of it, Table 4 Numbers 8, 9, and 10. This place lies more northerly by 40 minutes than is laid down in Mr. Tasman's chart: and beside its being made a firm, continued land, only with some openings like the mouths of rivers, I found the soundings also different from what the pricked line of his course shows them, and generally shallower than he makes them; which inclines me to think that he came not so near the shore as his line shows, and so had deeper soundings, and could not so well distinguish the islands. His meridian or difference of longitude from Shark's Bay agrees well enough with my account, which is 232 leagues, though we differ in latitude. And to confirm my conjecture that the line of his course is made too near the shore, at least not far to the east of this place, the water is there so shallow that he could not come there so nigh.

But to proceed: in the night we had a small land-breeze, and in the morning I weighed anchor, designing to run in among the islands, for they had large channels between them, of a league wide at least, and some 2 or 3 leagues wide. I sent in my boat before to sound, and if they found shoal water to return again; but if they found water enough to go a-