ADMIRALTY INSTRUCTIONS. 15 



energy and diligence with which we rely on you for 

 conducting these important services, may enable 

 you to complete them within that period. In this 

 latter case you will return to the Northern coast of 

 New Holland, and selecting such parts of it as may 

 afford useful harbours of retreat, or which may 

 appear to comprise the mouths of any streams of 

 magnitude, you will employ your spare time in 

 such discoveries as may more or less tend to the 

 general object of the expedition. 



" Before your departure from Sydney you will 

 have learnt that His Majesty's Government has 

 established a new settlement at Port Essington, or 

 somewhere on the North coast of New Holland ; 

 and before you finally abandon that district you will 

 visit this new colony, and contribute by every means 

 in your power to its resources and its stability. 



*' We have not, in the concluding part of these 

 Orders, pointed out the places or the periods at 

 which you are to replenish your provisions, because 

 the latter must depend on various circumstances 

 which cannot be foreseen, and the former may be 

 safely left to your own decision and prudence ; but 

 when you have been three years on your ground, 

 unless some very important result were to promise 

 itself from an extension of that period, you will 

 proceed to the Island of Mauritius, in order to com- 

 plete your stock of water and provisions, and then, 

 touching at either side of the Cape of Good Hope, 

 according to the season, and afterwards at Ascen- 



