King now started to return to the scene of his labours, this time intending to make his way along the east coast and through Torres Straits. With him went Surveyor-General Oxley, in the colonial brig, LADY NELSON, to examine Port Macquarie, in New South Wales, where, it will be remembered, Oxley reached the coast after his descent of the Main Range. On the 8th of May, 1819, the two vessels left Port Jackson, and arrived at their destination in two days. Here, after spending a short time in the necessary examination, they parted company, the LADY NELSON returning to Sydney with the Surveyor-General, and the MERMAID continuing her voyage.
The east coast having been twice surveyed by Cook and Flinders, there was little left beyond minor details for King to complete. An opening which had escaped Captain Flinders was examined, finding good, well sheltered anchorage within. They named it Rodd's Bay. Amongst other places they landed at, was Cleveland Bay.
"Near the extremity of Cape Cleveland some bamboo was picked no, and also a fresh green cocoa-nut that appeared to have been hastily tapped for milk. Heaps of pumice stone was noticed upon this beach; not any of this production had been met with floating. Hitherto no cocoa-nuts have been found on this continent, although so great a portion of it is within the tropic, and its north-east coast, so near to islands on which this fruit is abundant. Captain Cook imagined that the husk of one, which his second Lieutenant, Mr. Gore, picked up at the Endeavour River, and which was covered with barnacles, came from the Terra del Espiritu Santo of Quiros; but from the prevailing winds it would appear more likely to have been drifted from New Caledonia, which island was at that time unknown to him; the fresh appearance of the cocoa-nut seen by us renders, however, even this conclusion doubtful; Captain Flinders also found one as far to the south as Shoal Water Bay.
"In the gullies, Mr. Cunningham reaped an excellent harvest both of seeds and plants. Here as well as at every other place that we had landed upon within the tropic, the air is crowded with a species of butterfly, a great many of which were taken. It is doubtless the same species as that which Captain Cook remarks are so plentiful in Thirsty Sound. He says, 'We found also an incredible number of butterflies, so that for the space of three or four acres the air was so crowded with them, that millions were to be seen in every direction, at the same time that every branch and twig were covered with others that were not upon the wing.' The numbers seen by us were indeed incredible; the stem of every grass tree, which plant grows abundantly upon the hills, was covered with them, and on their taking wino, the air appeared, as it were, in perfect motion."
King landed at the Endeavour River to build a boat that he had on board in frame—in all probability the very same spot that Captain Cook landed upon forty-nine years before. He took the precaution to burn the grass that the natives should not attempt the same trick upon him that they had played on Cook. During the time the boat was building the inevitable thieving of the natives took place, and the usual tactics of firing over their heads had to be resorted to.
"On the 10th of July our boat was launched and preparations were made for leaving the place which had afforded us so good an opportunity of repairing our defects.
"The basis of the country in the vicinity of this river is evidently granitic; and from the abrupt and primitive appearance of the land about Cape Tribulation, and to the north of Weary Bay, there is every reason to suppose that granite is also the principle feature of those mountains, but the rocks that lie loosely scattered about the beaches and surface of the bills on the south side of the entrance, are of quartzoze substance; and this, likewise, is the character of the hills at the east end of the northern beach. Where the rocks are coated with a quartzoze crust, that, in its crumbled state, forms a very productive soil. The hills on the south side of the port recede from the banks of the river, and form an amphitheatre of low grassy land, and some tolerable soil, upon the surface of which, in many parts, we found large blocks of granite heaped one upon another. Near the tent we found coal, but the presence of this mineral in a primitive country, at an immense distance from any part where a coal formation is known to exist, would puzzle the geologist were I not to explain all I know upon the subject.
"Upon referring to the late Sir Joseph Banks' copy of the ENDEAVOUR log, I found the following remark:—'June 21st and 22nd, 1770—Employed getting our coals on shore.' There remains no doubt that it is a relic of that navigator's voyage, which must have been lying undisturbed for nearly half a century."
Leaving the Endeavour, the next object of interest they fell in with was the wreck of a vessel, which, on examination, proved to be the FREDERICK, but no signs of the fate of her crew were to be seen. They next had a narrow escape of being wrecked themselves on a bank at the mouth of a river running into Newcastle Bay, which King christened Escape River, and which was afterwards destined to come into fatal prominence as the scene of Kennedy's death.
Off Good Island, in Torres Straits, the arm of their anchor broke.