It was forthwith determined, that Captain Wickham and Mr. Fitzmaurice should collect the necessary materials for completing the survey, and preparing the chart of the bay in the immediate neighbourhood of the ship; while to myself the whale boat and yawl were to be entrusted; nor can I describe with what delight, all minor annoyances forgotten, I prepared to enter upon the exciting task of exploring waters unfurrowed by any preceding keel; and shores, on which the advancing step of civilization had not yet thrown the shadows of her advent, nor the voice of that Christianity, which walks by her side through the uttermost parts of the earth, summoned the wilderness and the desert to hail the approaching hour, in the fulness of which all the earth shall be blessed! Soon after dark we were visited by a squall from the eastward, longer in duration, and heavier than any we had before experienced. From our exposed situation--no land intervening for 30 miles--it raised a good deal of sea: the wind remained fresh at the east during the greater part of the night. February 24. The morning broke, dark, gloomy, and threatening; but, as the day advanced, it gradually assumed its usual bright and brilliant character; and at seven A.M. we started, Mr. Helpman having the whaleboat, while Mr. Tarrant accompanied me in the yawl. We crossed Disaster Bay in four and five fathoms, steering in the direction of Valentine Island, and inside a long sandy spit, partly dry at low-water, and extending two-thirds of the way across. FRESHWATER LAKE. While waiting for the tide to rise, in order to cross this natural breakwater, we landed, and struggled for a good mile through a mixture of deep mud and sand, drifted, at the coastline, into hills of from twenty-five to thirty feet high, and bound together by a long coarse grass; immediately beyond which we came upon a small lake of fresh water, where all the luxuriant growth of tropical vegetation was starting into life, and presenting an almost miraculous contrast to the barren sterility, that stamped an aspect of changeless desolation upon the rest of this inhospitable shore. Indeed, so far as our experience extended, upon the coasts, and within the interior of this in many respects extraordinary continent, the want of water appears to be the chief drawback to the fertility otherwise to be anticipated from its geographical position: at the same time, it is quite impossible to blind oneself to the fact, that further researches on the one hand, and the application of the great discoveries in hydraulics, of which recent years have been so fruitful, on the other, may, and probably will, spread the vernal bloom of cultivation over wastes, now condemned to prolonged and arbitrary periods of drought.