PORT DIFFICULT TO ENTER. 363 



come and fetch them from Port Essington. All 

 the prahus that come from Macassar to the north 

 coast of Australia sail under the Dutch flag, and 

 under Dutch inspection. They sail by the Dutch 

 license, and on returning, have to pass through the 

 Dutch custom-house, are no doubt rigorously 

 searched, and would have to pay heavy duties for 

 every article of English or foreign manufacture. 

 The most that the residents of Port Essington have 

 ever been able to purchase from the prahus that 

 come there, is a bag or two of rice and half a dozen 

 or a dozen fowls. As for their crews buying any 

 English goods, if they were to be procured at Port 

 Essington, the appearance of the men at once be- 

 tokens their utter poverty. With a great desert on 

 one side, and islands peopled principally by savages 

 on the other, I can see no advantages in the situa- 

 tion of Port Essington. Its harbour is certainly an 

 excellent one when it is entered ; but for a stranger, 

 it is both difficult to find and dangerous to approach. 

 There are shoals to the eastward of it, which render 

 it almost necessary for a vessel to keep out some miles 

 to seaward. The land is so low, that it cannot then 

 be seen, and the navigator has to depend solely on 

 his reckoning for knowing when he has arrived in 

 the meridian of the harbour, and must haul his wind 

 to the southward. When he comes within sight of 

 land, it is difficult to make out the mouth of the 

 harbour for want of any natural land-mark of im- 

 portance ; while, if he make a mistake of a mile or 



