asing a miserable "native
dog" to death. The only buildings of any interest on the shores of this
bay, are, the monument built by the French Government to the memory of
the unfortunate La Perouse, and a solitary mill on the banks of a little
stream that runs into it from the westward. How this mill is employed in
such a lonely place, where no cultivation is to be seen, I cannot
imagine, but should not wonder if a few pounds' weight of tobacco and
gallons of spirits found their way into the Colony hereabout, without
benefiting the revenue.

In April 1839, I left the shores of Australia, with my family, bound for
Batavia and Singapore _via_ Torres' Straits. We had a fine run up the
coast, and made the celebrated Barrier Reef on the morning of the
fourteenth day after leaving Sydney. We were fortunate in finding a
magnificent entrance into the Straits, in latitude 12 deg. 18' South, and
were fairly inside the barrier by nine A. M. This entrance, which is at
least three miles wide, it is worth any ship's while to seek for: it may
be known by two small rocks on the south side, as you enter, resembling
hay-cocks in shape and size: we saw them three miles off, and they were
the only objects visible above water, on the portion of the Barrier
within our view. From our entrance, we had a fine run, and found nothing
to stop us for a minute (during daylight), till clear of Booby Island at
the western end of the Straits, which we passed at 10 A. M. on the
seventeenth day from Sydney.

These celebrated Straits pick up and destroy some half a dozen ships
annually, and are so much dreaded by underwriters, that they refuse to
insure loaded vessels through them. From my own observation, and what I
have heard from others who have passed through Torres' Straits on
various occasions, it appears to me, that a great proportion of this
loss of property arises from carelessness on the part of ship-masters.
The current in the Pacific Ocean runs very strong to the north-west in
the neighbourhood of the Barrier; and this current is often forgotten or
not sufficiently allowed for by ship-masters the night before they
expect to make the reef. At sun-down, the night before we made it, we
were eighty miles from it; we went under easy sail all night, and, from
the distance _logged_ during the night, expected to make the reef at
noon, having made all sail at daylight; instead of which, we came
_suddenly_ on it at 8 A. M., thus having been thrown four h