April 10.
At daylight we continued pursuing our South by East course, following the same kind of low straight rocky shore, as that of yesterday afternoon. We passed inside a reef fronting the shore from a mile south of Freshwater Cove; this passage was about half a mile wide and from 7 to 12 fathoms deep. Having the flood-tide in our favour, we proceeded rapidly, and at the end of four miles, found the trend of the coast suddenly changed to East-North-East for two miles, when it again took a southerly direction, forming a chain of high rocky islets. Deferring our examination of the main, lying about a mile in the rear of these islets, we kept on our South by East course, in the direction of some very high land now seen for the first time. Three miles further brought us to a small rocky islet, where we landed for a set of angles.
Our hopes were considerably raised on reaching the top of this islet, by finding that we looked in vain for land towards the head of Collier Bay; the high land to the southward proved to be the south point of a large bay, having on its northern side similar high ranges.
LIZARDS.
This island was overrun with a great variety of lizards, in consequence of which we named it Lizard Island. During our stay here, two birds,* rare on this part of the coast, were shot; they were of a smaller kind than any I had before seen, and differed from them in plumage, being without the white collar round the neck. Leaving Lizard Island, we continued our southerly route, and ere long saw more land ahead, lying like a blue cloud on the horizon. Ten miles brought us abreast of the high land we had first seen, and six more to the southern point of a bay, lying on its south-western side, where the duties of the survey again obliged us to land. We considered ourselves now entering once more on the new lands of Australia, as Captain King could scarcely have had even a distant glimpse of this part; his extreme southern position being abreast of Freshwater Cove, from whence he describes the view of the coast as follows. "The land to the southward trended deeply in, and appeared to me much broken in its character." We therefore naturally looked on everything here with a greater degree of interest, and with the view of affording time to examine the country, and determine the position of this point by observation, I arranged to pass the night in its vicinity.
(*Footnote. Haematopus picatus, described in the Appendix to Captain King's work on Australia.)
HEAD OF COLLIER BAY.
The view from this station, blighted our hopes of finding an opening leading into the interior from Collier Bay, for we could trace the land all round the head of it, forming high ranges without a single break. This malapropos discovery, materially diminished the pleasure we had before experienced, on first seeing a new part of the continent. About twenty miles west from where we stood, were a group of islands, which I was able to identify as those seen from Bathurst Island, near the eastern entrance point of King's Sound; they appeared to extend about ten miles in a northerly direction, from the western point of Collier Bay.
AN EAGLE SHOT.
Whilst using the theodolite, we came within the searching glance of a hungry eagle, which soaring over our heads for some time, at length swooped within range of our guns, when he paid for his curiosity with the loss of his life. This was the only rapacious bird we saw in Collier Bay, and appears to be of the species Falco leucogaster Latham.* On examination, the stomach contained fish and part of a small snake, and from what I have since observed this bird frequents the sea coast. Their nests are very large, built on bare spots in the shape of a pyramid; some of them measuring three feet in diameter, and six high. To convey a better idea of the size and exposed situation of the nests of these birds, I may state that on low parts of the coast, they were often used as surveying marks. This projection, which we called Eagle Point, is of a siliceous sandstone formation, intersected by nearly vertical veins of quartz, and forms a spur thrown off from a high range four miles to the south-eastward. We did not find any water in the few miles of country traversed in the course of the afternoon, yet everything wore a rich green appearance, and the scenery in some of the dells we crossed, was very picturesque, and quite alive with birds and insects; flights of many-coloured parakeets swept by with a rapidity that resembled the rushing sound of a passing gust of wind. Among the trees, I noticed for the first time the Banksia, common in Western Australia; Mr. Cunningham, the botanist who accompanied Captain King, did not consider its indigenous empire extended to the North-West coast. Of the other kinds, and which complete all the variety we observed on this part of the continent, were the mimosa, acacia, papyrus, and two sorts of Eucalyptus; there were also several plants of the order Leguminosae.