Art. XXXII. Remarks to accompany Mr. Calder's Paper on 
the country lying between Lake St. Clair and Macquarie Har¬ 
bour.* By Lieut. Kay, R.N., F.R.S, Director of the Mag- 
netical Observatory, Hobart. 
Macquarie Harbour is, to the best of my belief, laid down on 
Frankland’s map of Van Diemen’s Land, from a survey by Capt. 
Philip P. King, of the Royal Navy (whose distinguished reputa¬ 
tion as a marine surveyor, admits no doubt of its accuracy) to 
within very much smaller limits, than the estimation of the dis¬ 
tance between Marlborough and Macquarie Harbour, by Mr. 
Calder, would seem to imply. Whatever method may have been 
employed in deciding the longitude of Cape Sorell by King, the 
probable error could not exceed ten miles; and he is the only 
authority that I am aware of for any portion of the western coast 
of Tasmania, except Flinders’ running survey in December, 1798, 
which was made under the most disadvantageous circumstances. 
In a narrative of the cruize of the Norfolk sloop, which vessel 
had been lent to Flinders by Governor Hunter (for the express 
purpose of passing through Bass’s Strait to the westward)-, and 
then to return to Port Jackson by the south end of Van Diemen’s 
Land), he expressly mentions that a time-keeper—an instrument 
so essential to accuracy in nautical surveys—it was impossible to 
obtain. After examining the principal groups of islands in the 
strait, and some parts of the northern coast of Van Diemen’s Land, 
especially Port Dalrymple, he was, on the 9th December, 1798, 
off the Hunter s Islands, and remarks in his journal, that on 
rounding their northern extremity, “ a long swell was perceived 
to come from the S. W., such as we had not been accustomed to 
for some time; and although it was likely to prove troublesome, 
and perhaps dangerous, Mr. Bass and myself hailed it with joy 
and mutual congratulation, as announcing the completion of our 
* The targe portion of the Tasmanian Journal lately devoted to Captain Sturt's 
Journal, and to other arUcles on the geography of Australia, has obliged us to delay the 
publication of Mr. Calder's account of the country lying between Lake St. Clair and Mac¬ 
quarie Harbour, Van Diemen's Land (read at a meeting of the Tasmanian Soci ct y 4th 
August, 1847) ; but the observations of Lieutenant Kay, R.N., which accompanied it, are of 
such intorcst as to induce us to give them insertion at once, in the present number, ithout 
the context to which they refer—E d. Tasmanian Journal. 
t Bass's Strait had only been discovered the same year. 
