244 FEATURES OF THE COUNTRY, 
motive than curiosity to ascertain if they had power to kill 
a white man. But we must be careful in giving credit to 
this, for it is much more probable that the cruelties exer- 
cised by the sealeis towards the blacks along the south 
coast, may have instigated the latter to take vengeance on the 
innocent as well as on the guilty. It wdl be seen, by a 
reference to the chart, that Captain Barker, by crossing the 
channel, threw himself into the very hands of that tribe 
which had evinced such determined hostility to myselt and 
my men. He got into the rear of their strong hold, and 
was sacrificed to those feelings of suspicion, and to that 
desire of revenge, which the savages never lose sight of 
until they have been gratified. 
It yet remains for me to state that when Mr. Kent 
returned to the schooner, after this irreparable loss, he 
kept to the south of the place at which he had crossed the 
first range with Captain Barker, and travelled through a 
valley right across the promontory. He thus discovered that 
there was a division in the ranges, through which there was 
a direct and level road from the little bay on the northern 
extremity of which they had last landed in St. Vincent s 
Gulf, to the rocky point of Encounter Bay. The import- 
ance of this fact will be better estimated, when it is known 
that good anchorage is secured to small vessels inside the 
island that lies off the point of Encounter Bay, which is 
rendered still safer by a horse shoe reef that forms, as it 
were, a thick wall to break the swell of the sea. But this 
anchorage is not safe for more than five months in the year. 
Independently of these points, however, Mr. Kent remarks. 
