328 SUPPOSED ISLANDS. 



along the eastern shore of the Gulf towards Booby 

 Island. Our being obliged to return thither, for a 

 chronometric departure prevented our examining 

 the middle of the upper part of the Gulf, where, ac- 

 cording to certain vague reports, there exist islands. 

 It is stated, for example, that after the south-west 

 monsoon has set in strongly, numbers of cocoa-nuts 

 are thrown on the north-west shore of the Gulf of 

 Carpentaria. In the year 1839, moreover, a small 

 proa was driven off the coast of Timor Laut during 

 the north-west monsoon. The wind blowing hard 

 drifted them to the S. E. for three days and three 

 nights, when they came to a low island, with no traces 

 of inhabitants, and abounding in cocoa-nut trees, 

 upon the fruit of which they lived until the monsoon 

 changed, when tijey sailed back to Timor Laut. 

 Flinders, when off Batavia River, on the N. E. side 

 of the Gulf, was led to suppose that an island existed 

 to seaward of him, from seeing some flocks of geese 

 coming from that direction one morning. Wilson, 

 also, in his Voyage round the World, speaks of 

 the Macassar people reporting an island in the 

 Gulf of Carpentaria, with sandal wood growing 

 on it. 



Soon after daylight on the 13th, we anchored 

 under Booby Island,* the flag-staff" bearing E.S.E. 



* The result of the whole of our observations at this island 

 are as follows :— Latitude of *he west point 10° 36' 42" S., longi- 

 tude, 141° 57' 45'' E. ; variation, 7" 0' E. The tides are equally 

 strange here and in Endeavour Strait; the stream setting to the 

 westward (W. S. W. to W, N, W) from nineteen to twenty hours, 



