318 
APPENDIX. 
A. 
Sect. III. 
N. Coast. 
as Dundas’s Strait, on account of Vernon’s Isles, which lie in 
mid channel, near its western end. 
The north eastern side of Van Diemen’s Gulf washes the 
south side of Coburg Peninsula. It has several bays, and, 
to the eastward of Mounts Bedwell and Roe, the shore 
is fronted by Sir George Hope’s Islands, forming a 
channel or port within them twenty miles deep and from 
three to six broad ; the entrance to it is round the north end 
of Greenhill Island, which is separated from the land 
of the peninsula, by a strait a mile and a half wide: the 
depth in mid-channel, for the shore on either side for half 
a mile is shoal and rocky, is eighteen fathoms, and within 
it the bottom is six, seven, and eight fathoms deep, and 
principally of mud. This strait is in latitude 11° 35'. 
The eastern side has several openings in it, but the shores 
are very low, and of shoal approach. At its south-east end 
are the two (and probably three) Alligator Rivers; the 
westernmost (or centre) is fronted by Field Island, the 
centre of which is in 12° 6' latitude, and 132° 25' 10" 
longitude. These rivers have been described in the nar- 
rative. See vol. i. p. 100, et seq. The bottom of the gulf is 
very low, and forms two bights, separated by a point that 
projects for seven or eight miles. 
In the neighbourhood of the rivers the country is sprinkled 
with wooded hills, that extend in a straggling chain towards 
Wellington Range, of which they might be considered a 
part ; but between the rivers and Clarence Strait the coun- 
try is low and flat, and only protected from inroads of the 
sea by a barrier of sand hills, beyond which not a vestige 
of the interior could be seen. 
CLARENCE STRAIT separates Bathurst and Melville 
