After midnight on the 3rd and 4th we had strong breezes of short duration from South-East, and although a hundred miles from the nearest land to windward, a fine kind of dust was found on the rigging, which, on examination by a microscope, proved to consist of sand and wood ashes.

REACH THE NORTH-WEST COAST.

We saw the land to the southward of Roebuck Bay on October 8th, and at noon passed four miles from Cape Bossut, which we found to be in latitude 18 degrees 42 minutes South and longitude 121 degrees 45 minutes East.* On the south side opened a bay two miles deep, with a small high-water inlet at its head. From thence we held a general South by West 1/2 West course, passing along the land at the distance of from three to four miles, in soundings of 5 and 6 fathoms, and at sunset anchored four miles from a low sandy coast, on which the sea broke heavily. Cape Joubert,** distant sixteen miles, was the last projection of any kind we passed.

(*Footnote. The longitudes depend on the meridian of Coepang. which has been considered in 123 degrees 37 minutes 0 seconds East.)

(**Footnote. In latitude 18 degrees 58 minutes South and longitude 121 degrees 42 minutes East. It is crested with bare white sand, and although only forty-five feet high is a remarkable headland on this low coast.)

APPEARANCE OF NORTH-WEST COAST.

From that headland commenced a low, wearisome, sandy shore, which we traced for sixty-five miles in a South-West by West direction, looking in vain for some change in its character. Nothing beyond the coast sand-dunes, sprinkled with vegetation, and only twenty feet high, could be seen from the masthead, although the ship was within three miles of the beach. This cheerless aspect was heightened by the total absence of native fires, a fact we had never before observed in such an extent of country, and truly significant of its want of fertility. Still, in our sight it possessed a greater charm than it may, probably, in that of others; as every fresh mile of coast that disclosed itself, rewarding our enterprise whilst it disappointed our expectations, was so much added to the domains of geography. That such an extent of the Australian continent should have been left to be added to the portion of the globe discovered by the Beagle was remarkable; and although day by day our hopes of accomplishing any important discovery declined, a certain degree of excitement was kept alive throughout.

It was the 13th before we had made good the distance I have above mentioned, when a reddish hillock, of fifty-six feet in elevation, in latitude 19 degrees 48 minutes South, and longitude 120 degrees 36 minutes East, promising a view of the interior, we went to visit it. There was less surf on the beach than we expected, and we landed without much difficulty. Our old friend, the black and white red-bill, or oyster-catcher, was in readiness to greet us, accompanied by a few families of sanderlings, two or three batches of grey plovers, and a couple of small curlews. Crossing the beach, a line of reddish sandstone cliffs, twelve feet in height, was ascended, and found to face a bank of sand, held together by a sort of coarse spinifex. This bank, which ran parallel to the coast, was narrow, subsiding into a valley three quarters of a mile wide, on the opposite side of which rose a hummocky ridge of coarse ferruginous sandstone formation. The valley was covered with brown grass and detached stunted bushes. Water had recently lodged in it, as appeared from the saucer-like cakes of earth broken and curled up over the whole surface. The nature of the soil was shown by the heaps of earth thrown out at the entrances of the holes of iguanas, and other burrowing creatures; it was a mixture of sand, clay, and vegetable matter.

VIEW OF INTERIOR.

From the highest hillock beyond the valley a view of the interior was obtained: it presents, like most of the portions of the continent we had discovered, the aspect of a dreary plain, clothed with grass and detached clumps of green brushwood. "What a strange country!" was the exclamation that naturally burst from us all, on beholding this immense and apparently interminable expanse, with no rise to relieve the tired eye. As we gazed, our imaginations transported us to the Pampas of South America, which this vast level greatly resembled, except that the motions of no startled deer or ostriches scudding over the country, and leaving a train of dust behind, gave life and animation to the scene. No trace of kangaroos, or of natives, not even the sign of a fire, greeted us on this inhospitable coast. The evidences of animal were as scanty as those of vegetable life.