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
(*Footnote. On mentioning this afterwards to Captain P.P. King, he told
me his survey of that part of the coast had never given him satisfaction;
for there the monsoon blows fresh, and his small vessel was hurried past
without his being able to land in search of better data for the chart.
The reader must not, from these corrections (few, when we consider the
extent of the survey) be led to imagine that our object is to pick out
errors in the surveys of others; but from being in a larger and better
appointed vessel, our opportunities of examination were necessarily
greater than those afforded to Captain King, who was always most anxious
to detect errors in his own charts. Without dwelling on the fact that the
result of our examination afforded us the satisfaction of restoring parts
of the chart, before erroneously corrected, to his original construction,
we would venture to hope that, while desirous as much as possible to
perfect our knowledge of the coast, we were in no manner actuated by that
spirit of fault-finding, so pithily described by Liebeg, when he says
that it is "startling to reflect that all the time and energy of a
multitude of persons of genius, talent, and knowledge is expended in
endeavours to demonstrate each others' errors.")
This error we found to extend also to reefs y and z. X is one of the
oval-shaped reefs, with the singular white patch of dead coral on its
northern extremity which I have before spoken of. Z is similarly marked,
and dries at last quarter ebb, while the South-East part of y is never
covered, a few mangroves growing on it. When abreast of x, we saw from
deck the curious flat-topped hill on the largest York island, Mount
Adolphus, and when over the centre of reef z, it bore North 23 1/2
degrees West. We now steered to the westward between reefs, x and y, and
afterwards North-North-West for Mount Adolphus. Between the Brothers and
Albany Islands the depth was 10 fathoms; these are both black rocky
lumps, particularly the latter, the outer being a mere pointed rock.
Altogether they assume a sterile and dreary appearance, in excellent
keeping with the inhospitable character of the adjoining coast. Several
shoals and much shoal water were noticed in Newcastle Bay.
BLACKWOOD BAY.
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