TUESDAY 5 JANUARY 1802

The refreshments we had procured were fish and oysters. The seine was frequently hauled upon the different beaches; but although it was done in the evening, round fires which had been previously kindled, little success was obtained in this way. With hook and line we were more fortunate, both alongside and from boats stationed off the rocky points; and the whole ship's company had generally a fresh meal once in three or four days. Of oysters, as many were taken from the shoals in both harbours as we chose to spare time for gathering. Our fire wood was procured from the north point of entrance to Princess-Royal Harbour, at the inner end of the long middle beach; but the trees best calculated for sawing into planks were obtained at the easternmost of the two woody projections on the south side of the harbour. A good number of planks and logs were taken on board for making garden boxes to contain the most curious plants collected by the naturalist, and for a variety of other purposes. The fresh water, procured by digging near the tents, was a little discoloured, but good; and it was sufficiently abundant for every purpose: its specific gravity was 1.003 at the temperature of 69°.

Captain Vancouver has described the country in the neighbourhood of King George's Sound, and therefore a few observations upon it will suffice. The basis stone is granite, which frequently shows itself at the surface in the form of smooth, bare rock; but upon the seacoast hills, and the shores on the south sides of the Sound and Princess-Royal Harbour, the granite is generally covered with a crust of calcareous stone; as it is, also, upon Michaelmas Island. Captain Vancouver mentions (Vol. I. p. 49) having found upon the top of Bald Head, branches of coral protruding through the sand, exactly like those seen in the coral beds beneath the surface of the sea; a circumstance which should seem to bespeak this country to have emerged from the ocean at no very distant period of time. This curious fact I was desirous to verify; and his description was proved to be correct. I found, also, two broken columns of stone three or four feet high, formed like stumps of trees and of a thickness superior to the body of a man; but whether they were of coral or of wood now petrified, or whether they might not have been calcareous rocks worn into that particular form by the weather, I cannot determine. Their elevation above the present level of the sea could not have been less than four hundred feet.

But little calcareous matter was found elsewhere than on the southern shores. In Oyster Harbour a rather strongly impregnated ironstone prevails, but mixed with quartz and granite; and in some parts of both harbours a brown argillaceous earth was not uncommon.

The soil of the hills is very barren, though, except near the sea coast, generally covered with wood; and that of the plains at the head of Princess-Royal Harbour has been described as shallow, and incapable of cultivation. In the neighbourhood of Oyster Harbour the land was said to be better, especially near the rivulet which falls into the northern corner; and on the borders of a small lake, at the back of the long beach between the two harbours, the country was represented to be pleasing to the eye and tolerably fertile.

The timber trees of the woods consist principally of different species of that extensive class called gum tree by the colonists at Port Jackson, by botanists eucalyptus. They do not grow very large here, and the wood is heavy and seldom fit for other than common purposes. Amongst the plants collected by Mr. Brown and his associates was a small one of a novel kind which we commonly called the pitcher plant. Around the root leaves are several little vases lined with spiny hairs, and there were generally found to contain a sweetish water, and also a number of dead ants. It cannot be asserted that the ants were attracted by the water, and prevented by the spiny hairs from making their escape; but it seemed not improbable that this was a contrivance of nature to obtain the means necessary either to the nourishment or preservation of the plant.

Amongst the animal productions the kangaroo and cassowary hold the first ranks. The kangaroo appeared to be numerous, and of more than one species; but none were caught. Three of them seen by me bore a resemblance to the large kind which inhabits the forests of Port Jackson; and the cassowary showed nothing distinguishable at a distance from the same animal at that place: both were shy; as were the ducks, swans, and all the birds.

Near Point Possession were found two nests of extraordinary magnitude. They were built upon the ground, from which they rose about two feet; and were of vast circumference and great interior capacity, the branches of trees and other matter, of which each nest was composed, being enough to fill a small cart. Captain Cook (see Hawkesworth, Vol. III. p. 195) found one of these enormous nests upon Eagle Island, on the East Coast; and if the magnitude of the constructor be proportionate to the size of the nest, Terra Australis must be inhabited by a species of bird little inferior to the condor of the Andes.

Amongst the reptiles was a variety of lizards; one of which, of the larger size, was met with by Dampier on the West Coast, and is described by him "as a sort of guano, but differing from others in three remarkable particulars: for these had a larger and uglier head, and had no tail: and at the rump, instead of the tail there, they had a stump of a tail, which appeared like another head; but not really such, being without mouth or eyes. Yet this creature seemed, by this means, to have a head at each end; and, which may be reckoned a fourth difference, the legs, also, seemed all four of them to be fore legs, being all alike in shape and length, and seeming by the joints and bendings to be made as if they were to go indifferently either head or tail foremost. They were speckled black and yellow like toads, and had scales or knobs on their backs like those of crocodiles. They are very slow in motion and when a man comes nigh them they will stand and hiss, not endeavouring to get away. Their livers are also spotted black and yellow; and the body when opened hath a very unsavoury smell. The guano's I have observed to be very good meat, and I have often eaten of them with pleasure; but though I have eaten of snakes, crocodiles, and alligators, and many creatures that look frightfully enough, and there are but few I should have been afraid to eat of, if pressed by hunger, yet I think my stomach would scarce have served to venture upon these New Holland guano's, both the looks and the smell of them being so offensive." The animal is certainly of a singular form; but it is scarcely necessary to say that the merit of Dampier's description does not consist in being strictly accurate.

The fish caught with hook and line were principally small mullet, and an excellent kind of snapper, nearly the same as that called wollamai by the natives of Port Jackson; but these were larger, weighing sometimes as much as twenty pounds.