Page:Discoveries & surveys in New Guinea and the D'Entrecasteaux Islands.djvu/310

 centre, and appeared clean; but every article had been removed from them.

Returning to the ship we found that some canoes had ventured near enough to barter; that no idea had been shown as to the value of our axes and hoop-iron, but that strips of cloth had been highly valued. Lieutenant Dawson, whilst engaged in fixing the position of these islets had a spear thrown at him, hence we called them Spear Islets. These natives had no human bone ornaments like those of Milne Bay.

West of Cape Nelson lies another large bay, fringed by a low densely-wooded coast, backed by the usual lofty inland range, and in this bay, which I named Dyke Acland, after my revered friend the late Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, Bart., we anchored in thirty-three fathoms, at eight miles' distance from shore.

The morning of May 7th rose thick and gloomy, with heavy rain; but having had a good view of the trend of the land the evening before, we proceeded cautiously on, with the steam pinnace leading. The western extremity of this bay, which is fifty miles from Cape Nelson, is about twenty miles to the eastward of a point indistinctly seen at a distance by D'Entrecasteaux and named by him Cape Sud Est; but as this part of the coast is low, and no distinctly defined cape exists here, it is evident that he had mistaken the high inland range of mountains, on which the position called by him a cape actually falls, for the coast-line.