io4 
FROM TORRES STRAIT TO H0NG-K0NG. 
We anchored for the night between Hammond Island and Wednesday Island, two of the barren 
and deserted-looking islets which form the south side of the channel. On the following day 
we cleared the reefs of Torres Strait, and stopped to dredge in six fathoms close to Booby 
Island, which marks the approach to the strait from the west. It is a bare grey and white 
rock, with here and there dark-green patches of vegetation. The soundings obtained in the 
course of the next four days—during which we had put more than 400 miles between us and 
Torres Strait—never exceeded fifty fathoms, thus showing that Australia and Papua are 
separated only by a very shallow sea, not much deeper than the channel which divides 
England from France, and that they may have formed at one time a single continent. This 
conclusion is further confirmed by the resemblance which naturalists have been able to 
establish between the fauna and flora of the two islands. During this cruise in what is 
known as the Arafura Sea, we noticed numerous yellow patches due to minute organisms, 
as well as the generally abnormal colour of the water, which from a light greenish blue 
gradually deepened into a very dark green as we approached the Arrou Islands. At night 
the sea appeared phosphorescent, and the easterly sky was rent by incessant flashes of 
lightning. 
THE ARROU ISLANDS. 
In the morning of the 14th September a few scattered trees showed above the horizon; 
they belonged to the small island of Ngor, the southernmost of the Arrou group. For the 
rest of that day, and during the whole of the next, we sailed within sight of the western 
shores of these little-known islands. Nothing was visible from the deck but a long level 
shore covered with dense forest, some of the trees rising to a great height. The whole Arrou 
group—about 100 miles long from north to south, and thirty miles wide—seems to consist of 
islands of low elevation, barely raised, indeed, above the level of the sea, and separated from 
each other by narrow channels. There are many coral reefs, especially on the eastern side, 
and a shallow sea divides these islands from the neighbouring shore of Papua. We hove-to 
for the night, and at sunrise started for Dobbo, a trading settlement situated at the north- 
DOBBO, ARROU ISLANDS. 
western end of Wokan. As we were about to enter the channel between the latter island 
and Wamma, we noticed two prahus or Malay vessels on the horizon. These singular 
ci aft, with their overhanging poop, low bow, and sails of irregular shape, reminding one of 
the wings of some monstrous sea-fowl, are extraordinary objects when compared with the 
smart rig of our home-built ships ; yet such vessels probably navigated these seas long before 
a sail dared to cross the Mediterranean or the German Ocean. 
Dobbo is built on a sandy spit which projects into the channel at its narrowest point, 
