MR. FORSYTH.

Mr. Forsyth, in the Vansittart, had again preceded our arrival in the river Tamar by a few days. His visit to the west coast had been attended with considerable risk.* Still, with his usual zeal, he had not lost sight of the important branch of the service in which he was employed, and had made a survey of Port Davy and the coast to the South-west Cape, which completed our chart of the south-western shores of Tasmania.

(*Footnote. Mr. Forsyth entered and examined Macquarie Harbour in his boat, and found on an island, in the head of it, two men in a state of starvation. These he took with him and returned to the mouth of the harbour; but a gale of wind having set in in the meantime, the Vansittart had sought shelter in Port Davy, lying ninety miles to the southward. Day after day passed away without any sign of the cutter. The increase of two, requiring much more than could be afforded, to their small party, soon consumed their stock of provisions, sparingly dealt out; so that, to preserve the lives of his party, Mr. Forsyth was obliged to risk a boat-passage, in the depth of winter, and along a storm-beaten coast, to Port Davy, which he most providentially reached in safety; though, at one time, in spite of the precaution taken to raise the gunwale by strips of blanket, the sea was so great that they expected each moment would be their last.)

The coast on either side of the Tamar still remained to be surveyed, and accordingly I undertook the examination of that to the eastward, whilst Mr. Fitzmaurice, although even now scarcely convalescent, proceeded to the westward.

DESCRIPTION OF COAST.

Without entering into details, I may briefly say, that to the eastward the coast trended North 62 degrees East to Cape Portland, distant fifty-eight miles; and that at the distance of eight, eighteen, twenty-nine, forty-eight, and fifty-three miles, the rivers Currie, Piper, Forestier, Tomahawk, and Ringarooma, empty themselves into wide bays, which increase in depth as they advance eastwards. That formed by the point opposite Waterhouse Island and Cape Portland,* which receives the two last-mentioned rivers, and bears the name of the larger Ringarooma Bay, is seven miles deep and fifteen miles wide. Mount Cameron lies behind the head of it, where there is a vast extent of boggy land; this is also the case in the next bay to the westward, Anderson Bay, which receives the waters of the Forestier River.** The only good soil seen was on the large Piper River, so that the disproportion of land fit for cultivation on this part of the northern shore of Tasmania, with that which is not, is very great. Behind the coast the eye wanders over interminable woody ranges of various heights, thrown together in irregular groups, called by the colonists Tiers. They are seldom separated by valleys of any width, but rather by gullies, and are generally covered with an impervious scrub. The most conspicuous points, in addition to Mount Cameron, are Mounts Barrow and Arthur, two peaks about 4,500 feet high, very much alike, and lying nine miles in a north-west direction from each other. Mount Barrow bears, from Launceston, East-North-East, thirteen miles.

(*Footnote. Small vessels anchor behind an island on the west side of this cape, to take away the wool from the sheep-stations in the neighbourhood. The rivers mentioned in the text are only navigable for boats, and by them only at high-water.)

(**Footnote. A small bay, with some outlying rocks off its points, bearing South-South-East, seven miles from Ninth Island, affords shelter for small vessels in its north-west corner. The passage inside that island should be used with caution.)

DON TOMAS.

At the large Piper River I passed a night at the station of a gentleman of the name of Noland, whom I found to be the nephew of a person of remarkable talent and great influence with the Peruvian Government, known only, at Lima, by the name of Don Tomas. There was a good deal of mystery about his character and position, nobody being able to explain who he was, whence he came, or what was the source of his influence; and it was rather a curious circumstance that I should learn the explanation of what had so much puzzled me in South America, at a solitary sheep-station in Van Diemen's Land.