NOTES BY JAMES BACKHOUSE WALKER. 



2?;t 



Another place of interest on this coast to which we 

 paid a visit is Wilmot Harbour, locally known as 

 Lagoon Bay, a deep cove to the south of the basaltic 

 promontory of Cape Frederick Henry. Here is the one 

 solitary dwelling on this part of the Peninsula. It is 

 probably the only locality which has altered much in 

 appearance since the time of Tasman. Everywhere else 

 the wild bush remains untouched, but here is green 

 pasture, and even a small cornfield or two. The southern 

 headland of the harbour is one of the wildest and most 

 picturesque of spots. Standing on the grassy surface of 

 its narrow extremity, which is rent into chasms and 

 fissures, you look down upon the sea breaking tumul- 

 tuously into a deep gulf below. On the other side of the 

 gulf, to the south, there rises abruptly out of the water 

 the grassy and wooded steep of a headland, with bold 

 outline like Mount Direction. Turning to the north you 

 see at your feet two rocky islands, their precipices 

 crowned with wood and scrub, the waves heaving and 

 swirling round their bases. Across the mouth of the 

 harbour stand the basaltic columns of Cape Frederick 

 Henry — a lesser Cape Itaoul. Beyond, over outlying 

 rocks* and islets, is the place of Tasman's anchorage; 

 while in the distance, twelve or fifteen miles off across 

 the sea, loom the peaks of Maria Island. 



On our return we took the way of the Two Mile 

 Beach (the North Bay of the maps). Behind the sand- 

 hills at the back of the beach lies a large lagoon, which 

 discharges its brackish waters by a narrow sandy channel 

 at the south corner of the beach. This is the spot where 

 Tasman's boat's crew landed — on the morning after their 

 exploration of Blackman's Bay — to search for water, and 

 where they found that the sea breaking through into the 

 lagoon had made the water too brackish for use. The 

 spot is easily identified from Tasman's description, and 

 is probably hardly altered in appearance by the lapse of 

 two centuries and a half. The beach is a fine stretch of 

 broad white sand two miles long, on which the great 

 ocean rollers break splendidly, and is backed by a line of 

 low sandhills, behind which lies the lagoon. 



For more than a century after Tasman anchored oft 

 Green Island no navigator ventured to follow him into 

 the stormy seas that wash the dark cliffs of the Great 

 South Land. The first of the moderns who sighted the 

 coast of Van Diemen's Land was the French captain 

 Marion du Fresno in 1772. Marion made the West 

 Coast a little to the south of Tasman's landfall, and, 

 following almost the same course as the earlier navigator, 



