188 
SURVEY OF THE INTERTROPICAL 
1822 . was much clearer, and the air consequently drier 
Jan. 24. than when the wind blew from the sea. 
As an anchorage, during the summer months, 
Dirk Hartog’s Road has every thing to recom- 
mend it, excepting the total absence of fresh 
water, which, according to the French, was not 
found in any part of Shark’s Bay ; the anchorage 
is secure and the bottom clear of rocks. There 
is also an abundance of fish and turtle, and of 
the latter a ship might embark forty or fifty 
every day, for they are very sluggish, and make 
no effort to escape, perhaps from knowing the 
impossibility of their scrambling over the rocky 
barrier that fronts the shore, and dries at 
half ebb. Of fish we caught only two kinds ; 
the snapper, a species of sparus, called by the 
French the “ rouge bossu,'" and a tetradon, which 
our people could not be persuaded to eat, al- 
though the French lived chiefly upon it. There 
are some species of this genus that are poison- 
ous, but many are of delicious flavour: it is de- 
scribed by M. Lacepede in a paper in the AnnaL 
du Museum D'Histoire Naturelle, (tom. iv. p. 203,) 
as le tetrodon argente, (t. argenteus.) 
26 . On the 26th we sailed, and passed outside 
of Dorre and Bernier’s Islands; nothing was 
seen of the reef that lies in mid-channel, on 
the south side of Dorre Island: a rippling was 
