288 APPEARANCE OF THE COAST. 



temperature on board ship rang-ed between 72° and 

 83°. During our five days' stay ofF Dufaure Island 

 we were daily employed in catching' rain water for 

 ship's use, being on reduced allowance of that 

 necessary article. The wind throughout has been 

 steady at S.E., occasionally varying a point or two 

 towards east. 



Sept. l^tJi. — For the last three days the coast has 

 appeared as a strip of low land, backed by mountain 

 ranges of moderate elevation.* We observed several 

 Openings, apparently creeks or mouths of rivers, and 

 saw much smoke and some canoes, but our dis- 

 tance fi-om the shore was too great to allow of com- 

 munication. In the evening we stood off to seaward, 

 and during the night, while trying to avoid it, pro- 

 bably passed over the assigned position of a reef laid 

 down on one of the charts as having been seen in 

 1804, but without being able to confirm or disprove 

 its existence.f 



* From the haze involving distant objects — less frequent (as 

 ■we afterwards had reason to believe) during the westerly monsoon — 

 the much higher Owen Stanley Range vfas not then visible ; it 

 had also, probably from the same cause, quite escaped the notice 

 of D'Urville who passed this portion of the coast at the distance of 

 about eight or nine miles. 



t Although this reef does not exist in the position assigned to 

 it, I may state that its presence upon the charts rests upon the 

 authority of Coutance ; Freycinet, rejecting Coutance's longitude 

 of Cape Deliverance and adopting that of D'Entrecasteaux, has 

 laid down the reef in question as bearing W.S.W. from Point 

 Hood, at a distance of twelve leagues. Another but smaller reef 

 is stated on the same authority to exist five leagues S.E. \ E. from 

 Cape Rodney. 



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