cii 
INTRODUCTION. 
{Prior Discoveries, 
Bass and in smooth water under its lee. A white appearance, further back, 
FL iT96. RS " kept us a short time in suspense ; hut a nearer approach shewed it 
to be the beach of a well-sheltered cove, in which we anchored for 
the rest of the night. So sudden a change, from extreme danger to 
comparatively perfect safety, excited reflections which kept us some 
time awake : we thought Providential Cove a well-adapted name for 
this place ; but by the natives, as we afterwards learned, it is called 
Watta-Mowlee . 
On landing next morning, March go, water was found at the back 
of the beach. The country round the cove is, in general, sandy and 
barren. No natives were seen, but their traces were recent. The 
extremity of the reef, which afforded us such signal shelter, bore 
S. E. by E. from the centre of the beach, the north head of the cove 
E. N. E. ; and except at the intermediate five points of the compass, 
Watta-Mowlee affords shelter for large boats, with anchorage on a 
fine sandy bottom. 
Between three and four miles to the northward of this cove, we 
found the river, or rather port, which was the original place of our 
destination ; and it having been a pilot named Hacking, from whom 
the first information of it had been received, it was named after him : 
by the natives it is called Deeban. 
April ist, was employed in the examination of the port. It is 
something more than one mile wide in the entrance ; but soon con- 
tracts to half that space, and becomes shallow. Neither have the 
three arms, into which if afterwards branches out, any deep channel 
into them ; although, within the second branch, there are from 3 to 
8 fathoms. Finding there was no part accessible to a ship, beyond 
two miles from the entrance, nor any prospect of increasing our 
small stock of provisions, Port Hacking was quitted early in the 
morning of April 2. 
The shores of the port are mostly rocky, particularly on the north 
side ; but there is no want of grass or wood ; and without doubt 
there are many culturable spots on the sides of the streams which 
descend, apparently from the inland mountains, into the uppermost 
