378 hydrographer's department of the admiralty. 



The making of paths through the China Sea [says the report of this 

 year] has been the patient but persevering work of the Navy of this 

 country for 30 years. Commenced in war and continued in peace, may 

 well it have been considered a gigantic task to which no end could be 

 seen when first undertaken, and yet to the end, so far as this great area 

 is concerned, may now be clearly and definitely counted upon. 



In this year many errors were found in the old charts 

 between Capetown and .Saldanha Bay. 



In 1870 this work is also mentioned, and that the survey has 

 been continued northwards to Lamberts Bay. Numerous out- 

 lying dangers, extending, in some instances, for several miles 

 from the coast, between Saldanha Bay and St. Helena Bay, were 

 charted, and the surveying parties continued northwards towards 

 Orange River. 



On the Australian Station. t\vo officers died of exposure in 

 the execution of their duties. 



In 1 87 1 the survey reached Orange River and Port Nolloth. 



This year the greater part of the stretch known as the 

 90-Mile Beach, on the Victorian Coast, was surveyed. As a land- 

 ing could not be effected with safety, it was necessary to carry on 

 the survey by walking parties, crossing the rivers on rafts con- 

 structed of drift timber. In this manner, and in the face of many 

 difficulties and privations, among them the absence of fresh pro- 

 visions, 120 miles of coast were surveyed in less than three 

 months. 



So recently as 1872, shore parties in Pondoland fotmd them- 

 selves on more than one occasion in considerable danger, and one 

 party, in the neighbourhood of St, John's River, was detained by 

 the Pondo chief for seven weeks. For over three years this 

 party, imder Lieutenant Archdeacon, working along the coast, 

 underwent extreme privations, and worked with unremitting 

 energy. 



In i88y, when eleven ships, with a complement of nearly 

 800, were in service, there is an interesting note : — 



In the Southern part of the Red Sea a fourth search was mnde fr-r 

 the sunken rock on which it was reported that two British steam vessels 

 had struck. This search was crowned with success by the discovery of 

 a small isolated patch with as little as 15 feet of water over it. It has 

 been called the Avocet rock. The unsuspected existence iif this lock 

 with such an enormous number of vessels passing over it is ■juc of the 

 most remarkable instances of its kind on record. 



In 1890 a surveying officer was specially engaged in obtain- 

 ing the longitudes of Port Nolloth, Mossamedes, Benguela, St. 

 Paul de Loanda, and San Thome. This expedition, so successful 

 in its results,- terminated by the death of Commander Pullen, of 

 malarial fever. 



In 1892 a new isolated rock, 1^2 miles from land, with only 

 20 feet- of water over it, was discovered otif the Anglesey Coasts 

 directly on the highway to Liverpool. 



