Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 2 (Stockdale).djvu/19

] induced our fishers to search for them in the bay. At low water they discovered, very near this place, an oyster-bank, from which they took a large quantity; and the flood brought in with it several species of ray, some of which they caught also.

The whole of the 26th I spent in describing and preparing every thing I had collected since our arrival in Rocky Bay. I was astonished at the great variety of productions still afforded me by this part of New Holland, where I had been very diligent in my researches for more than a month the preceding year; though, it is true, several leagues from the places we had now visited, and in a more advanced season, when a great number of plants, that I now found, must have disappeared.

On the following morning, as soon as it began to dawn, we set off, with the design of remaining on shore a couple of days, resolving to pursue our researches to a considerable distance from our place of anchorage. We landed in the south-west, and followed a path, traced nearly in that direction by the natives, where we observed tolerably recent marks of naked feet, among which were some of very young children. No doubt, some families, alarmed by our stay in Rocky Bay, had