MAGNIFICENT SUNRISE. 97 



our fire glimmering on the rocks and bushes about, 

 and utter silence in the air around. It was from 

 this hill that Cook, after having repaired his vessel, 

 came to cast a look on the dangers that yet sur- 

 rounded him, and from which he hoped here to see 

 a method of escape. How little could he have fore- 

 seen that in so short a time a British empire would 

 be founded on the shores he had then first dis- 

 covered, and that this reef-environed coast, danger- 

 ous though it be, should be in the daily track of 

 vessels ! We were now going to commence marking 

 out a more secure road through some of these reefs 

 and shoals, and hoped in some degree to modify 

 their danger. Such labours of detail, useful though 

 not brilliant, are all that Cook and the illustrious 

 navigators of old have left for the moderns to aspire 

 to. 



June 6. — At daylight we found our blankets wet 

 through with the dew that had fallen. The sun-rise 

 was a magnificent one : the morning calm, the sea 

 like one of molten lead, with its horizon quite indis- 

 tinguishable, or melting into the air, which was 

 rather hazy, with a low bank of clouds. A few 

 miles to the eastward of us we could just perceive 

 upon the water a broken white line, curved and in- 

 dented, and running to the horizon on either hand ; 

 this was the surf breaking on the edge of the Barrier 

 reef. As the run rose, the morning mists began to 

 creep up the sides of the hill, at first in light curls? 

 but shortly after in dense folds of vapour, that ga- 



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