CUTTER NEARLY SWAMPED. 219 



fringing reef round the central nucleus of volcanic 

 rock. # 



May 7. — After morning sights had been obtained 

 for the chronometer, we weighed and stood to the 

 northward. We passed suddenly from greenish 

 blue water of about twenty fathoms depth, into a 

 line of muddy water fifteen miles from the nearest 

 point of land, soon after which we found ourselves 

 in four fathoms mud, when we hauled out a little 

 and anchored for the ni^ht. 



May 8. — Captain Blackwood, Lieut. Ince, and 

 Mr. Macgillivray, went away in the ship's cutter to 

 examine the land, but as it was blowing frcsli there 

 was a very heavy rolling sea over these shoal mud- 

 flats ; and when they had gone six or eight miles, 

 a sea broke into them and filled the cutter to the 

 thwarts. They were obliged to throw their bow- 

 gun and much gear and stores overboard, and with 

 some difficulty baled the water out and reached the 

 Prince George at night, as she was coming down to 

 join us from the northward. She had had a view 

 of one of the boats the clay before, but lost sight 

 of them again somewhere to the northward. 



May 9. — This was a very stormy morning — 

 rain, wind, thunder and lightning, with a heavy 



* The coral reefs marked in the old charts, as running along 

 the south coast of New Guinea, west of Bristow Island, make it 

 improbable that any rivers open in that direction, and render it 

 likely, that these fresh water openings of ours are the result of 

 the drainage of a large part of the country. 



