SAIL FROM CHAMPION BAY. 3\)5 



has recently visited it in the colonial schooner 

 Champion. We did not, on our route, fall in with 

 any native, but on reaching the boat, found that a 

 party of five men had approached the beach, and 

 held friendly communication with Mr. Pasco, who, 

 in exchange for a handkerchief or two, had obtained 

 from them a hunger belt, composed of wallaby furs, 

 a throwing stick, and a nose piece of kangaroo 

 bone. They were entirely naked, and slightly scarred, 

 but were not smeared with the red pigment called 

 wilgy, and had their hair knotted upon the crown 

 of their head, like the natives of the neighbour- 

 hood of King's Sound. 



On the morning of the l6th we were again on 

 our way southwards, with, strange to say at that 

 season of the year, westerly winds, which pre- 

 vailed for the three succeeding days. After touch- 

 ing at Swan River, (where, finding His Excel- 

 lency the Governor still absent, an account of our 

 cruise was left with the Surveyor-General,) we 

 reached Koombanah Bay on the 27th. Mr. Forsyth, 

 whom I had sent over land, had completed the sur- 

 vey of this anchorage, and Leschenault Inlet, which 

 it joins in the south corner by a narrow boat channel. 

 The wreck of a large whale ship in the head of the 

 bay shows the folly of attempting to ride out the 

 winter gales to which it is exposed ; but this may 

 be remedied by a breakwater thrown out from 

 Point Casuarina, of which nature has laid the 

 foundation in the reef that extends out across the 

 bay in the desired direction. The strong outset 



