EARLY HISTORY 25 



island) commemorates the family seat of the Montagus ; 

 Cape Sandwich (the north-east point of Hinchinbrook) 

 the older title, and Dunk Isle the family name of the dis- 

 tinguished friend of the great discoverer of lands. 



From this remote and unheard of spot may, accordingly, 

 be traced association with a contemporary of Robert 

 Walpole, of Pitt and Fox, of Edmund Burke, of John 

 Wilkes (of the North Briton), of the author of The 

 Letters of Junius and of John Gilpin, and many others of 

 credit and renown. The First Earl Sandwich of Hinchin- 

 brook was the '' my lord " of the gossiping Pepys. Through 

 him Dunk Island possesses another strand in the bond 

 with the immortals, and is ensured connection with remote 

 posterity. He gambled so passionately that he invented 

 as a means of hasty refreshment the immemorial " sand- 

 wich," that the fascination of basset, ombre or quadrille 

 should not be dispelled by the intrusion of a meal. He, 

 too, was the owner of Montagu House, behind which 

 " every morning saw steel glitter and blood flow," for the 

 age was that of the duellist as well as the gambler. 



Rockingham Bay was so named in honour of the 

 marquis of that title, the wise Whig premier who held that 

 while the British Parliament had an undoubted right to 

 tax the American colonies, the notorious Stamp Act was 

 unjust and impolitic, "sterile of revenue, and fertile of 

 discontent." 



Cook and his day and generation passed, and then for 

 many years history is silent respecting Dunk Island. The 

 original inhabitants remained in undisturbed possession ; 

 nor do they seem to have had more than one passing 

 visitor until Lieutenant Jeffereys, of the armed transport 

 Kangaroo, on his passage from Sydney to Ceylon in 1815, 

 communicated with the natives on then unnamed Goold 

 Island. Captain Philip P. King, afterwards Rear-Admiral, 

 who made in the cutter Mermaid a running survey of these 

 coasts between the year 18 18 and 1822, and who was the 

 first to indicate that " Mount " Hinchinbrook was probably 

 separated from the mainland, arrived in Rockingham Bay 



