72 
A VOYAGE TO 
1776. 
December. 
We had kept, on our larboard bow, the land which firft 
opened off Cape St. Louis*, in the direction of South 53 0 Eaft, 
thinking that it was an ifland, and that we fhould find a 
paffage between it and the main. We now difcovered this 
to be a miftake ; and found that it was a peninfula, joined 
to the reft of the coaft by a low ifthmus. I called the bay, 
formed by this peninfula, Repulfe Bay ; and a branch of it 
feemed to run a good way inland towards the South South 
Weft. Leaving this, we fteered for the Northern point of 
the peninfula, which we named Howe's Foreland , in honour 
of Admiral Lord Howe. 
As we drew near it, we perceived fome rocks and break¬ 
ers near the North Weft part; and two iflands a league 
and a half to the E aft ward of it, which, at firft, appeared 
as one. I fteered between them and the Foreland t, and 
was in the middle of the channel by noon. At that time 
our latitude, by obfervation, was 48° 51' South; and we 
had made twenty-fix miles of Eaft longitude from Cape 
St. Louis J. 
From this fituation, the moft advanced land to the South¬ 
ward bore South Eaft; but the trending of the coaft from 
the Foreland was more Southerly. The iilands which lie 
off Chriftmas Harbour bore North; and the North point of 
the Foreland, North 6o° Weft, diftant three miles. The land 
* Cape Francois. 
+ Though Kerguelen’s fhips, in 1773, did not venture to explore this part of the 
coaft, Monfieur de Pages’s account of it anfwers well to Captain Cook’s. “ Du 17 
“ au 23, l’on ne prit d’autre connoiftance que celle de la figure de la cote, qui, courant 
<c d’abord au Sud-Eft, & revenant enfuite au Nord-Eft, formoit un grand golfe. 11 etoit 
“ occupe par des brifans & des rochers; il avoit auffi une ifle bafle, & aflez etendue, & 
u l’on ufa d’une bien foigneufe precaution, pour ne pas s’affaler dans ce golfe.” Voyage 
du M. de Pages , Tom. ii. p. 67. 
J Cape Francois. 
of 
