15G CHANGE OF LANDSCAPE. 



mediate change in the weather. The survey of 

 the south-eastern portion of the sound being now 

 complete, the ship was taken over to the high 

 rocky land lying north 20 miles from Point 

 Torment. We crossed the flat extending four miles 

 N.W. from that point, in from two to three fathoms 

 at low water ; the soundings afterwards varied from 

 nine to eleven fathoms with a soft, muddy sand 

 bottom. We anchored in seven fathoms low water, 

 one mile and a half S.S.W. from the southern of 

 two small rocky islets, lying 16 miles north 

 from Point Torment and three from the rocky 

 shore behind them ; a sand-bank, dry at low water, 

 extended from these islets to within half a mile of 

 the ship. Our eyes were now relieved by a pleas- 

 ing change of landscape; the land had wholly 

 chanored in character from that of which we had 

 seen so much and grown so weary. It no longer 

 stretched away in an illimitable and boundless 

 plain, but rising abruptly from the water's edge, 

 attained an elevation of 700 feet. The highest 

 part of this range (afterwards named Compass 

 Hill) bore N. by W. distant four and a quarter 

 miles. We were all of course exceedingly anxious 

 to visit this new land ; but the weather, strange to 

 say, put our patience to a trial of four days, during 

 which it equalled in severity any we had expe- 

 rienced under Swan Point. It commenced with 

 dark masses of clouds rising in the east, which 

 were soon followed by a fresh breeze from the S.E. 



