ii6 THE GREAT BARRIER REEF. 



and repaired the various damages it sustained being now mariced by a handsome monument to his 

 memory. The summit of Lizard Island is the station from which Captain Cook reconnoitred the 

 reefs, and decided upon attempting to pass out through the Barrier eastwards. He did so at a 

 small gap in latitude 14° 32' S., now known on the Admiralty charts as Cook's Passage. The two 

 islands of North and South Direction were so named by this explorer on account of their utility, 

 in conjunction with Lizard Island, as beacons. Captain Cook's re-entry within the mazes of the 

 Barrier was accomplished through a similar narrow gap, named by him Providential Channel, some 

 150 miles farther north, whence he discovered the route to Torres Strait, now daily navigated, 

 between the outer Barrier and the mainland coast. 



Captain Cook was not aware of it ; but there were, in the near vicinity of Lizard Island, two 

 passages through the Barrier far more practicable than the one he penetrated. One of these, 

 known as the One and a Half Mile Opening, is less than ten miles north of Cook's Passage, and 

 the other, the Lark Pass, just forty miles south of the same point. None of the three passages, 

 nor, indeed, any other that penetrates the Barrier farther north, is ot the wide, open character 

 that characterises the channels and openings to the south, previously enumerated ; and it is 

 significant in association with this phenomenon, that no large rivers, draining a considerable 

 extent of back country, fall upon the northern side of the eastern coast. Such larger rivers as 

 do exist flow westward to the Gulf ot Carpentaria. At the same time, some correlation might 

 possibly be established between the Endeavour River estuary and the Lark Passage, and between 

 the estuary of Kennedy River and the First Three Mile opening, a little to the north of Cape 

 Melville. In both instances the Barrier gaps lay some little distance to the north of the rivers' 

 mouths, and the connection between the two is consequently not so obvious as in the examples 

 previously recorded. 



North of the promontory- of Cape Melville, at which point the outer edge of the Barrier 

 approaches to within twelve miles from the mainland, there is for the next 160 miles, or 

 as far north as Cape Grenville, but little difference in the physical and geological features of this 

 great reef area. The margin of the Barrier follows the trend of the coast at a distance vary- 

 ing from twenty to forty miles. Its main area is similarly occupied with half-sunken reefs 

 and coral islets, supplemented occasionally by a few sheltered rocks or island groups of primitive 

 formation. One such island group, known as the Howicks, occurs in the area just passed, 

 some twenty miles south of Cape Melville. The highest point on the largest island of this 

 series does not exceed 180 feet. The Flinders' group, situated off Princess Charlotte's Bay, 

 the indentation to the west of the same cape, embraces some half-dozen exceedingly rugged 

 islands, the largest ol which yields an altitude of 829 feet. Within recent years this last-named 

 group of islands has been the subject of attention in respect of the considerable quantity 

 of oysters it produces, which are systematically collected and shipped to Thursday Island, 

 Normanton, and Croydon. The species, Ostrea nigromargiiiafa , is a large, coarse variety that 



