PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION E. 541 



the entrance of Apsley Strait to the south-coast, being about 40 nniles. 

 Melville Island is much larger, and is very irregular in outline ; the 

 extreme eastern and western points are about 85 miles apart, and the 

 greatest breadth from north to south is about 40 iniles. The northern 

 and western coasts Avere seen by the early Dutch and French explorers, 

 who named some of the points — Cape Fleming, Cape Van Dieman, 

 Cape Helvetius, and Cape Fourcroy. 



I do not think that there is any record to show that any of these 

 old voyagers landed, and the insularity of these large tracts of country 

 was determined by Captain P. P, King, who, in the Mermaid, after 

 the discovery of Port Essington, proceeded to explore the great Gulf 

 Van Dieman, discovered and entered for a short distance by three 

 Dutch ships in 1705. 



On April 26th, 1818, King sailed round Cape Don, and says, " To 

 the westward the land was observed trending in a north and south 

 direction, and bore the appearance of an island." 



On May 12th, sailing up from the south-west corner of this gulf, 

 he came to the coast again, probably somewhere between Capes Gambler 

 and Keith, and until l\Iay 31st was engaged in circumnavigating the 

 islands, one of which he named Melville, after Lord I\Ie]ville, the then 

 First Lord of Admiralty, and the other Bathurst, after Earl Bathurst, 

 Secretary of State for the Colonies. 



In 1824 the British Government decided to form a military settle- 

 ment in North Australia, the ostensible renson being a desire to en- 

 courage trade between Australia and the East ; but the real reason, 

 no doubt, was to take formal possession of the whole of Australia for 

 the British Crown, as it was then deemed quite possible that the French 

 Avould take possession of the unoccupied portions of the island conti- 

 nent. Port Essington was the portion determined upon. 



King, the discoverer, had described the harbor there as being equal 

 if not superior to any that he had ever seen, so H.Jf.S. Tainar, under 

 Captain l^remer, with the store ship Countess of Horcourt, sailed from 

 Sydney on August 24th, 1824, taking a party of the 3rd Regiment and 

 a number of prisoners — chiefly mechanics — who were called volunteers, 

 and arrived at Port Essington on September 2()th. Formal possession 

 was taken of the north coast, and then, because fresh water could not 

 be readily found (there was really abundance in the locality), the ex- 

 pedition sailed on, further west, and arrived in Apsley Strait, Melville 

 Island, on September 30th, formed the settlement there, and called it 

 Fort Dundas. It was abandoned in 1829. 



To resume the narrative. We landed at a sandy patch between 

 two reefs close to vivid red alluvial cliffs about 20ft. high, showing- 

 good-looking soil, with tall woolly- butt timber at the back, mottled 

 iron conglomerate rock showed at the bottom, and the edge of the 

 Wdter was stained a rusty color through the excess of iron. We found 

 two turtles' nests in a sandy bank-, one containing the large round 

 parchment-covered eggs of the gxeen turtle, and the other the smaller 

 eggs of the shell turtle ; we got about six dozen eggs from the two 



