5oo NORTHMOST AUSTRALIA 



latter and travelled for a mile due north, across a patch of well- 

 grassed, open country, nearly level a fine site for a township or 

 small station. [The site is now occupied by the TOWNSHIP OF 

 COEN. R. L. J.] 



The path now led us across a third-magnitude creek (SHANTY 

 CREEK) with a killing yard, and the ruinous remains of a shanty on 

 its further or right bank, near its junction with the so-called Coen 

 River. We camped here between the river and the creek (CAMP 37). 

 Latitude of the [South] Coen River Mining Camp, 13 53' 42" S. 

 (determined by observations of Vega and Arided). 



As we approached the site of the old diggings, signal fires broke 

 out on the Twelve Apostles, in advance of us, in such a manner as 

 to leave no doubt in our minds that the ABORIGINALS (themselves 

 unseen) were honouring our progress with their serious attention. 

 Their object could not have been to molest us by burning the grass, 

 as the valleys had been burned two or three weeks previously, and 

 afforded abundance of sweet grass, too green to burn. 



Brusher shot a small kangaroo, which furnished us with fresh 

 meat for two days. 



In 1876, a party of fifteen went out to PROSPECT THE PENIN- 

 SULA. They split up about the [South] Coen into three parties. 

 The party who remained here (Messrs. Sefton, Verge, Watson and 

 Goodenough) got on GOLD about September, 1876. They 

 returned to Cooktown in December of the same year, with 60 ounces 

 of gold among them. They returned to the same ground in 

 May, 1877, and stayed till December, when they came back to 

 Cooktown with 140 ounces. The prospectors, in consideration of 

 .200 subscribed in Cooktown, marked out the track in February, 

 1878, and were followed by a crowd of diggers. The diggings 

 continued till about July, 1878, when they were abandoned. 



The prospectors, and the diggers who followed them to the 

 rush, believed that they were on the COEN RIVER [of Carstenszoon, 

 1623], which enters the Gulf of Carpentaria in 12 13' S. lat. 5 but, 

 as already mentioned, the camp is in 13 53' 42" S. As I then and 

 afterwards followed the river down for nearly 20 miles to the west, 

 and found several large rivers between it and the latitude of the 

 Coen, I have no doubt that the river, instead of the COEN, is the 

 KENDALL CREEK, crossed by the Messrs. Jardine, in 14 S. latitude, 

 on their famous journey to Cape York in 1864-5. 



[My conjecture, as above, proved no less erroneous than that of the prospectors. 

 Later maps show that the " Coen " of the goldfield, which I propose, following Mr. 

 J. T. Embley, who has surveyed the river, to call the SOUTH COEN, falls into the 

 ARCHER RIVER in long. 142 16' E. Various positions have been assigned to the river 

 named the Coen by Jan Carstenszoon, Commander of the " Pera " and " Aernem " 

 expedition in 1623, and it still appeared till recently in official maps as falling into the 

 Gulf of Carpentaria in 12 15' S. lat. A river named the PENNEFATHER appears in 

 that latitude in the 4-mile map of Cape York Peninsula issued by the Lands Department 

 in 1908. It had been visited by Flinders in 1802 and mistaken by him for the Coen. 



