About eight miles from the extremity of the island we discovered a bay affording good anchorage in east winds. It was afterwards called Fitzmaurice Bay. From its neighbourhood a long dark line of black cliffs stretches southward until within about three miles of the point, when the ground sinks suddenly, whence vessels are apt to be misled and to fancy that the island ends there, whilst in reality it stretches out into a low dangerous rocky point, named after the writer, for about three miles more.
SEAL BAY.
Rounding this we anchored on the eastern side of it in Seal Bay--a wild anchorage, the swell constantly rolling in with too much surf to allow of our commencing a series of tidal observations. This bay, in the mouth of which lies a small cluster of rocks, is separated from the one on the opposite side, by a strip of low sandy land, which, as I have said, may easily be overlooked by vessels coming from the westward. A ship indeed has been lost from fancying that the sea was clear south of the black cliffs that skirt the shore down from Fitzmaurice Bay. The Wallaby are numerous on this part of the island. Mr. Bynoe shot one (Halmaturus bellidereii) out of whose pouch he took a young one which he kept on board and tamed. It subsequently became a great pet with us all.
I noticed here a trappean dyke, but the general formation of this end of King Island exactly corresponded with that about Captain Smith's house, which shows that it is a continuous ridge of granite. The south-eastern shore is rather steep, and the ground which rises abruptly over it is almost denuded of wood.
Leaving Seal Bay--from the south point of which we saw the principal dangers at this extremity of Bass Strait, Reid's rocks bearing East by South 1/4 South 12 miles--we coasted round the eastern shore and anchored off a sandy bay about the centre of the island. The only remarkable object was a rock, lying one mile from the shore and five from Seal Bay, on which we bestowed a name suggested by its form, Brig Rock. Off the north point of the bay in which we anchored lies a white rock or islet called Sea Elephant Rock, with a reef a mile off its north point. Opposite this is a small inlet fed by the drainage of some lagoons or swamps behind the bay. Northward the character of the coast, as far as we could see, changes considerably, being lower, with a continued line of sandy shore.
A breeze from the eastward prevented our completing the survey of the northern side of the island; but one important result we had arrived at, namely, that safe anchorage may be obtained in west winds within a moderate distance of this part of the shore in less than fifteen fathoms.
CROSS THE STRAIT.
We now crossed over to the group of islands fronting the north-western point of Tasmania, and confining the southern side of the mouth of the Strait. The tide setting to the South-West at the rate of three knots an hour* brought us within five miles of Reid's rocks. Passing at that distance from their eastern side we had 28 and 30 fathoms sand and rock: and the greatest depth we found in crossing was 37 fathoms towards the south side of the Strait.
(*Footnote. This set of the tide being rather across the channel renders the passage between King Island and Reid's rocks by no means recommendable. Captain King on returning to New South Wales, used this passage and was very nearly wrecked; the set of the tides at that time not being known. It appears they saw the south point of King Island just at dark, and shaped a course well wide of Reid's rocks; they found themselves, however, drifted by the tide close on them. We made the time of high-water at the full and change of the moon in this entrance of the Strait to be half an hour before noon; but the western stream began three hours and a half before, and the eastern again precedes low-water by the same amount of time.)
A SECURE ANCHORAGE.