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INTRODUCTION. 
[Prior Discoveries. 
Flinders The little time there was for examining the coast, confined my ob- 
and Bass. . „ . . . ' J 
1798. servations to what were necessary for giving it the formation it has in 
the chart. The country is hilly, and Mr. Bass found it impenetrable 
from the closeness of the tall brush wood, although it had been par- 
tially burnt not long before. There was very little soil spread over 
the rock and sand, and the general aspect was that of sterility. 
Several deserted fire places, strewed round with the shells of the sea 
ear, were found upon the shore. 
The south-west wind died away in the night ; and at six next 
morning, Dec. 9, we got under way with a light air at south-east. 
After rounding the north-east point of the three-hummock land, our 
course westward was pursued along its north side. 
A large flock of gannets was observed at daylight, to issue out of 
the great bight to the southward ; and they were followed by such a 
number of the sooty petrels as we had never seen equalled. There 
was a stream of from fifty to eighty yards in depth, and of three hun- 
dred yards, or more, in breadth ; the birds were not scattered, but 
flying as compactly as a free movement of their wings seemed to 
allow ; and during a full hour and a half, this stream of petrels con- 
tinued to pass without interruption, at a rate little inferior to the 
swiftness of the pigeon. On the lowest computation, I think the 
number could not have been less than a hundred millions ; and we 
were thence led to believe, that there must be, in the large bight, 
one or more uninhabited islands of considerable size.* 
From the north-east point of the three-hummock land, the shore 
trended W. i° N. three miles ; then S. 39 0 W. four miles, to a rocky 
point, forming the south-west extremity of what was then ascer- 
tained to be Three-hummock Island. The channel which separates 
* Taking the stream to have been fifty yards deep by three hundred in width, and that 
it moved at the rate of thirty miles an hour, and allowing nine cubic yards of space to 
each bird, the number would amount to 151,500,000. The burrows required to lodge 
this quantity of birds would be 75,750,000 ; and allowing a square yard to each burrow, 
they would cover something more than 18| geographic square miles of ground. 
