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 little way up the river, which is navigable for a short distance for smaller craft. Chinese abound in Cooktown, and very valuable residents they are, as they are the sole cultivators of fruit and vegetables. Scores of aboriginals were strolling about the town, and they afforded us some amusement by the expertness with which they dived into the river for coins. At about midnight our last visitor from Cooktown, Mr. Milman, who had been spending the evening with the Commissioner, left us, and the stragglers of our own party being all brought on board, the tide serving, we weighed anchor at 1 a.m. of the 27th, and so bade adieu to the last civilized settlement we should see until our return from the newly-acquired territory.

At daybreak Cape Flattery was passed, and, about 7 o'clock, Lizard Island, where a few years ago a party of Bêche-de-mer gatherers were murdered by the blacks. This incident was rendered memorable by a peculiarly tragic circumstance. Mrs. Wilson, the wife of one of the party, had accompanied her husband on the expedition. With her baby at her breast, she contrived to escape from the massacre, and accompanied by the Chinese cook to the party, put to sea in a ship's tank, in the hope of saving their lives. The poor fugitives drifted on to an island in the Howitt group, about forty miles to leeward, and there perished from want of water. The son of our skipper, happening to touch at this spot some months afterwards, found the skeletons of the poor mother and her babe lying on the beach, and that of the Chinaman a little way off. Beside the bleached remains of the mother lay a scrap of paper, upon which she had contrived to scribble, in the midst of her prolonged agony, a rough diary of the adventures and sufferings of herself and her companion. What unrecorded tragedies these sunlit ocean regions have witnessed!

Clearing Lizard Passage, and keeping the largest island of the Lizard group right astern, we steered straight for the mile-and-a-half opening in the Great Barrier Reef. Our skipper here mounted to the fore-cross-trees, to keep sharp observation of our course; nor was the precaution needless, for on both sides of our little craft we could plainly discern the long waves breaking heavily into foam on the coral reefs. Skilful