196 cook's first voyage august, 



northward and westward as I could see, which could 

 not be less than thirteen leagues. As I was now 

 about to quit the eastern coast of New Holland, 

 which I had coasted from latitude 38 to this place, 

 and which I am confident no European had ever seen 

 before, I once more hoisted English colours, and 

 though I had already taken possession of several par- 

 ticular parts, I now took possession of the whole 

 eastern coast, from latitude 38 to this place, lati- 

 tude 10i S., in right of his Majesty King George the 

 Third, by the name of New South Wales, with all 

 the bays, harbours, rivers, and islands situated upon 

 it : we then fired three vollies of small arms, which 

 were answered by the same number from the ship. 

 Having performed this ceremony upon the island, 

 which we called Possession Island, we reimbarked 

 in our boat, but a rapid ebb tide setting N. E. made 

 our return to the vessel very difficult and tedious. 

 From the time of our last coming among the shoals, 

 we constantly found a moderate tide, the flood set- 

 ting to the N. W. and the ebb to the S. E. At this 

 place, it is high water at the full and change of the 

 moon, about one or two o'clock, and the water rises 

 and falls perpendicularly about twelve feet. We saw 

 smoke rising in many places from the adjacent lands 

 and islands, as we had done upon every part of the 

 coast, after our last return to it through the reef. 



We continued at anchor all night, and between 

 seven and eight o'clock in the morning, we saw three 

 or four of the natives upon the beach gathering shell- 

 fish ; we discovered, by the help of our glasses, that 

 they were women, and, like all the other inhabitants of 

 this country, stark naked. At low water, which 

 happened about ten o'clock, we got under sail, and 

 stood to the S. W. with a light breeze at E., which 

 afterwards veered to N. by E. : our depth of water 

 was from six to ten fathom, except in one place, 

 where we had but five. At noon, Possession Island 

 bore N. 53 E., distant four leagues, the western 



