Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1.: With an Account of the Coasts and Rivers Explored and Surveyed During; The Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, in the Years 1837-38-39-40-41-42-43.; By Command of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty. Also a Narrative; Of Captain Owen Stanley's Visits to the Islands in the Arafura Sea.Stokes, John Lort
History
Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1.: With an Account of the Coasts and Rivers Explored and Surveyed During; The Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, in the Years 1837-38-39-40-41-42-43.; By Command of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty. Also a Narrative; Of Captain Owen Stanley's Visits to the Islands in the Arafura Sea.
Stokes, John Lort
Australia -- Description and travel; Australia -- Discovery and exploration; Natural history -- Australia
Towards 10 A.M. steering East by South before a long rolling sea, we
passed about six miles from the South-west Cape of Tasmania. There was no
opportunity at the time of determining exactly the amount of error in the
position assigned to it in the present charts, but we were satisfied that
it was placed at least five miles too far south. The Maatzuyker Isles, a
group a few miles to the south-east of this cape, are also incorrectly
laid down. The view of this headland was of a very impressive and
remarkable character, and to add to the usual effect of its lonely and
solitary grandeur, a heavy sea still vexed and swelling from the
turbulence of the recent gale, was breaking in monotonous regularity
against its white and aged face; rising a thousand feet precipitously
above the level of the sea, and terminating in a peak, rendered yet more
conspicuous by a deep gap behind it.
The adjacent coast had a singularly wild, bare, and storm-beaten
appearance. We beheld the rugged and treeless sides of barren hills; and
here and there, where vegetation struggled with sterility, its stunted
growth and northern inclination caused by the prevailing winds testified
to an ungenial clime; high, bare-faced peaks appeared occasionally
through the thick clouds that girdled them, and the whole coastline
forcibly reminded us of the dreary shores of Tierra del Fuego.
BRUNY ISLAND LIGHTHOUSE.
On opening d'Entrecasteaux Channel, we observed a splendid lighthouse
erected by Sir John Franklin, on the South-West extremity of Bruny
Island, and which serves to guide entering vessels clear of the shoals in
the mouth of that channel, formerly fatal to so many a luckless voyager,
wrecked within sight of the hoped-for shore, upon which he might never
set his foot. The situation of the lighthouse appears admirably chosen,
and it may readily be seen in the daytime, a wide gap being cut in the
woodland behind it. In alluding to the great improvement in the
navigation of d'Entrecasteaux Channel, by the erection of the lighthouse
on Bruny Island, it must be remembered that we are indebted to the
indefatigable exertions of Lieutenant Burnett, R.N., who had been
appointed Marine Surveyor to the colony by the Admiralty, for a knowledge
of the exact position of its dangers. In prosecuting this service, I
grieve to say, his life was lost, by the upsetting of a boat in one of
those sudden gusts of wind which sweep down the steep valleys on the
sides of that channel. This sudden termination of Lieutenant Burnett's
labours has been deplored alike by the colony, and by the profession of
which he was so bright an ornament.
We entered Storm Bay after dark against a strong North-West wind, which
quite vindicated the title of the bay to the name it bears, and so much
delayed our progress, that it was morning before we were abreast of the
Iron Pot lighthouse at the entrance of the Derwent River, and after dark
before we reached Sullivan's cove, Hobart.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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