Moved the ship within three miles and a half of the south extreme point of the river, the highest part bearing South 40 degrees West. A party of us visited it, and, from a rather extraordinary sight we there beheld, it was called Turtle Point.

DEAD TURTLES ON THE SHORE.

Behind some very low scattered sandhills that form it, fronting a mangrove flat, we beheld great numbers of dead turtles, that seemed to have repaired thither of their own accord to die. They were lying on their bellies, with their shells for the most part uninjured, though some were turned over, and showed other signs of visits from the natives. A few skeletons of a large bustard* were also seen there, so that the place had quite the appearance of a cemetery, and reminded me of a spot on the River Gallegos in Patagonia, where the guanacos (a kind of llama) assemble to pay the debt of nature, and leave their bones to whiten the surface of the plain. Never before, on any occasion, had we seen dead turtles in any similar position; how they could have got there was a mystery, unless we suppose them to have been thrown up by some earthquake wave. They had evidently not been transported thither by the hand of man, though, as I have observed, some of the natives who thinly inhabit this district, finding them there, ready to their hand, had availed themselves of the gifts of fortune. I could not help, as I gazed on this remarkable scene, calling to mind the marvellous elephant cemetery described by Sinbad the Sailor. It is possible that the observation of some similar phenomenon may have suggested to the imagination of the authors of the Thousand and One Nights their romantic fiction. At any rate an air of mystery will always hang round Turtle Point until the facts I have mentioned shall have been explained.

(*Footnote. A specimen of one of them was brought away and deposited in the Museum at Sydney.)

The nature of this part of the country I have before described on my visit to Indian Hill. A ridge of breakers ran off north a couple of miles from our station; a low point, bearing West 16 degrees South about eight or nine miles, with an opening trending in south intervening, with some slightly elevated land bearing South 34 degrees West about four or five leagues, terminated our view to the westward. We found the tide much weaker on this side of the entrance, not exceeding three miles an hour; the stream ran up three-quarters of an hour after high-water. The times of high-water for the last three days had been most unaccountably the same.

December 5.

Crossed over to Point Pearce at daylight, but the wind being light all the morning did not reach an anchorage till the afternoon; the extreme of the point bearing North 41 degrees West three-quarters of a mile. A line of ripplings extended a couple of miles off to the south-west of it, in which we found there was only four fathoms. In standing across the entrance we passed first a bank of three fathoms, with six and seven on each side; Turtle Point bearing South 45 degrees West 11 miles; then two more, one of seven and eight fathoms, with twelve and seventeen on each side, the other of only two fathoms with twelve on the south, and twenty on the north side.

MERMAID BANK.

We subsequently found the latter to be a continuation of the bank on which Captain King had five fathoms, Point Pearce bearing North 22 degrees East 5 miles; and in order to record his visit we named it, after his vessel, Mermaid Bank.

VISIT THE SHORE FOR OBSERVATIONS.