64 
Notes on the 
same time it appears that between 11° and 11° 25' south, 
and 125° 20' and 125° 50' east, 'there are six patches of 
coral known, with from 12 to 16 fathoms over them. 
Captain Heyward saw a dry portion in 11° 35' and 
124° 05'; and between this and the former points shoals 
may very probably be found. 
At last, on the 8th October, we got upon our ground 
in N.W. Australia, and surveyed the hitherto unex¬ 
plored coast from Cape Bosset (18° 42'south, 1° 52 ; 
west of Timor) to Turtle Islands, between the 8th and 
21st October. 
It appeared a most desolate and out of the way corner 
of the world, without rivers or any other interesting 
features, or any natural advantage to save it from the 
reproach of sterility. The opening at the back of 
Buccaneers’ Archipelago we had formerly found to be a 
comparatively unimportant indentation ; the eastern part, 
or Collier’s Bay, being nothing more than a shallow 
sinuosity of the coast line, and the western part narrowed 
gradually into a tolerably extensive sound, terminated by 
Fitzroy River, which was traced for twenty-five miles in # 
a southerly direction, draining the lowland through which 
it flowed. The opening near Cape Latouche Trevilledid 
not afford even a tolerable anchorage. 
Upon our present visit we found near the sand-hill named 
Blaze that the flood stream came from N.b.W. 1 and 1 \ 
knots, and the rise and fall was 36 feet. This sand-hill, of 
about 200 feet in height, was the first appearance of eleva¬ 
tion we saw for 200 miles. We occasionally saw distant 
parts of the interior by the effects of refraction, which 
had a level and uninteresting appearance. The coast is 
every where fronted by a narrow belt of sand-hills from 
40 to 50 feet high. Near the Turtle Islands numerous 
and intricate shoals diversify the bottom of the sea for 18 
miles from the coast. Some rocks which we surveyed 
