Winds and currents.] TERRA AUSTRALIS. 
mercury, and diminish in strength, or die away ; but the gale is 
not over, although a cessation of a day or two may take place. In 
some cases, the wind flies round suddenly from north-west to 
south-west ; and the rainy, thick weather then continues a longer 
time. 
Such is the usual course of the gales along the South Coast 
and in Bass' Strait ; but on the east side of the strait the winds par- 
take of the nature of those on the East Coast, where the gale often 
blows hardest between south and south-east, and is accompanied 
with thick weather, and frequently with heavy rain. 
In the four or five summer months, the south-east and east 
winds appear to be most prevalent all round the Great Bight ; but 
even there, the western winds sometimes blow at that time, and 
usually with considerable strength. Thus I had a strong south- 
west wind in the middle of February, near the Investigator's Group, 
and a gale from the same quarter in March, at the entrance of 
Spencer's Gulph ; which last was felt still more severely in Bass' 
Strait by captain Baudin. At the two extremities of the coast, that 
is, in the strait and near King George's Sound, the winds blow 
sometimes from the west and sometimes from the eastward, in the 
summer ; but the strongest winds are from the south-west. 
It will hence appear, that the summer is alone the proper time 
for a ship to come upon, and still more so for exploring the south 
coast of Terra Australis ; whether she proceed along it from west 
to east, as I did in the Investigator, or from east to west, as captain 
Baudin, seems to be almost a matter of indifference. From Cape 
Leeuwin to the end of the Archipelago of the Recherche, and from 
Cape Northumberland to Bass' Strait, it is perhaps most advanta- 
geous to proceed eastward/on account of the current ; but in the in- 
termediate and more considerable part of the coast, a western route 
is certainly preferable. It has also this general advantage, that the 
winds which are fair for running along the coast are those that 
blow moderately, and are accompanied with fine weather, most 
vol. r. 3 M 
