Cvi INTRODUCTION. [Aw Discoveries. 
Shok™. close to the north-west side of the Coal Island; but no vessel of 
more than three hundred tons should attempt it. 
Bass. In December, Mr. George Bass obtained leave to make an expe- 
™* dition to the southward ; and he was furnished with a fine whale 
boat and six weeks provisions by the governor, and a crew of six 
seamen from the ships. He sailed Dec. 3., in the evening ; but foul 
m and strong winds forced him into Port Hacking and Watta-Mowlee. 
On the 5th, in latitude 34 0 38', he was obliged to stop in a small 
bight of the coast, a little south of Alowrie. The points of land 
there are basaltic; and on looking round amongst the burnt rocks 
scattered over a hollowed circular space behind the shore, Mr. Bass 
found a hole of twenty-five or thirty feet in diameter ; into which 
the sea washed up by a subterraneous passage. 
Dec. 6., he passed a long sloping projection which I have called 
Point Bass, lying about three leagues south of Alowrie. Beyond 
this point, the coast forms a sandy bay of four or five leagues in 
length, containing two small inlets ; and the southernmost being 
accessible to the boat, Mr. Bass went in and stopped three days. 
This little place was found to deserve no better name than Shoals 
Haven. The entrance is mostly choaked up by sand, and the inner 
part with banks of sand and mud ; there is, however, a small channel 
sufficiently deep for boats. The latitude was made to be 34° 5a ' 
south ; the sloping Point Bass, to the northward, bore N. 12 0 E., and 
a steep head at the southern extremity of the bay, S. 35 0 E. The 
tide was found to rise seven or eight feet, and the time of high 
water to be about eight hours and a half after the moon passed over 
the meridian. 
The great chain of high land, called the Blue Mountains, by which 
the colony at Port Jackson is prevented from extending itself to the 
west, appeared to Mr. Bass to terminate here, near the sea coast. 
The base of this southern extremity of the chain, he judged to 
extend twenty-five or thirty miles, in a south-western direction from 
