After hoisting in the boats we shaped a course along the eastern shore of the Gulf towards Booby Island. Our being obliged to return thither, for a chronometric departure prevented our examining the middle of the upper part of the Gulf, where, according to certain vague reports, there exist islands. It is stated, for example, that after the south-west monsoon has set in strongly, numbers of coconuts are thrown on the north-west shore of the Gulf of Carpentaria. In the year 1839, moreover, a small proa was driven off the coast of Timor Laut during the north-west monsoon. The wind blowing hard drifted them to the South-East for three days and three nights, when they came to a low island, with no traces of inhabitants, and abounding in coconut trees, upon the fruit of which they lived until the monsoon changed, when they sailed back to Timor Laut. Flinders, when off Batavia River, on the North-East side of the Gulf, was led to suppose that an island existed to seaward of him, from seeing some flocks of geese coming from that direction one morning. Wilson, also, in his Voyage round the World, speaks of the Macassar people reporting an island in the Gulf of Carpentaria, with sandalwood growing on it. EXAMINE ENDEAVOUR STRAIT. Soon after daylight on the 13th, we anchored under Booby Island,* the flagstaff bearing East-South-East half a mile to the south. The weather looked unusually threatening the previous night. Between the observations for rating the chronometers I fulfilled my intention of making a cursory examination of the entrance of Endeavour Strait, and anchored a mile and three quarters off the North Wallis Island, bearing South 23 degrees East. It is a conical rocky isle, upwards of 70 feet high, of a coarse sandstone formation; an extensive coral reef fronts it on all sides, except the north. The result of a night's observations on shore placed the summit in latitude 10 degrees 51 minutes 25 seconds South; the true bearing of Booby Island was North 22 degrees 13 minutes West. The natives appear to make a cemetery of this island; for on a small sandy point on the north side we found a large grave, covered with turtle backs, and containing several skeletons. This is a very different mode of burial from that noticed in Flinders River. (*Footnote. The result of the whole of our observations at this island are as follows: Latitude of the west point 10 degrees 36 minutes 42 seconds South, longitude, 141 degrees 57 minutes 45 seconds East; variation, 7 degrees 0 minutes East. The tides are equally strange here and in Endeavour Strait; the stream setting to the westward (West-South-West to West-North-West) from nineteen to twenty hours, and to the northward and eastward (North to North-East) only from four to five hours. The latter stream commences about an hour before high-water, which takes place at 4.30, on the full and change days, when the rise at springs is 12 feet, and at neaps 7; the length of flood and ebb is nearly six hours.)