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
The principal occupation of these people during this month of the year is
taking the Sooty Petrel, called by the colonists the Mutton Bird, from a
fancied resemblance to the taste of that meat. It is at the present month
that they resort to the island for the purpose of incubation. They
constitute the chief sustenance of the sealers, who cure them for use and
sale: their feathers also form a considerable article of trade. Many
parts of the island were perfectly honeycombed with their burrows, which
greatly impede the progress of the pedestrian, and are in some cases
dangerous from snakes lying in them. The sealers told me that they had
lost a cat which died within an hour after the bite of one of these
reptiles. We here found cabbages and water, and the people informed us
that it was always their custom to plant a few vegetables on the islands
they frequented.
From the top of this island we had a good view of the Harbinger reefs,
so-called from a convict ship of that name which was lost upon them and
all hands perished. I was glad to find they were only two detached rocks
lying three miles and a half from the shore, instead of, as reported, one
continued reef lying six or seven miles from the land. They bore north
six miles from our position.
CAPTAIN SMITH.
The sealers informed us that a house which we descried in the bay, was
occupied by a gentleman who had met with a reverse of fortune. We
accordingly paid him a visit next morning, and found that he was a
Captain Smith with whom the world had gone wrong, and who had accordingly
fled as far as possible from the society of civilised man and taken up
his residence on the shores of King Island with his family. He had given
the name of Port Franklin to the bay, which we changed to Franklin Road,
from its not being worthy of the title of a Port. He was led to choose
his position from its being in the neighbourhood of the only secure
anchorage from all winds, and near the best soil he had found after
traversing the whole of the island. According to his account it was
totally unfit for rearing sheep on a large scale; the bushes and grass
being so full of burrs that the wool was completely spoiled. The soil was
everywhere very inferior, and a few patches only of clean land was to be
found, the principal part being overrun with dense scrub and impervious
thickets. There were few elevations on the island, and those not of any
great magnitude, the loftiest point being scarcely seven hundred feet.
The formation of the neighbourhood of Captain Smith's house was granite:
water abounds.
WEST SIDE OF KING ISLAND.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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