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
Continuing on the same course, we passed three miles from Cape Bedford,
at 4 P.M. This is one of the most remarkable features on the coast, being
a bluff detached piece of tableland, surmounted by a singular low line of
cliffs, reminding me forcibly of the lava-capped hills on the river Santa
Cruz, in eastern Patagonia. As far as I could judge, by the aid of a good
glass, it seemed to be composed of a mixture of red sand and ironstone,
of a very deep red hue, bearing a great similarity to the country on the
North-West coast, in latitude 15 1/4 degrees South.
Leaving Cape Bedford, we went in search of a shoal laid down by H.M.S.
Victor, as lying two miles to the West-South-West of Three Isles. Both
Captain King and Lieutenant Roe had expressed a doubt of its existence in
the position marked, a doubt which our researches fully justified; and
therefore, as it at present stands, it should be expunged from the chart.
From thence we steered north for Lizard Island, the remarkable peak on
which soon rose in sight; this course took us within three miles of Cape
Flattery, where a couple of peaks, with a slope between them, render it a
conspicuous headland.
About seven miles west from thence, there is a strange alteration in the
appearance of the country, changing from moderately high conical-shaped
hills, to lofty table ranges about 500, or 600 feet in height, trending
about South-West and by West.
LIZARD ISLAND.
Having still a little moonlight, we were enabled to keep underweigh part
of the night, and during the first watch came to in 13 fathoms, in a bay
on the west side of Lizard Island, the extremes bearing from South 1/2
East to East-North-East. During the day we experienced a northerly
current, varying from three quarters to half an knot an hour.
July 3.
We remained at this anchorage, until the following morning, for the
purpose of determining the position of the island, and of visiting the
peak, which we found to be nearly twelve hundred feet high. I ascended by
a slope rising from the shore of the small bay where our observations
were taken, and which may be easily distinguished, from being the second
from the north point of the island. Their result was to place it in
latitude 14 degrees 40 3/4 minutes South longitude 13 degrees 17 3/4
minutes East of Port Essington. Variation by the mean of five or six
needles was 7 3/4 degrees East being half a degree more than it was at
Cape Upstart. Other magnetic observations were also made, consisting of
those for the dip and intensity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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