report on the suitability of them
as sites for penal establishments. Moreton Bay, Port Curtis, and Port
Bowen were selected; and Oxley left in the colonial cutter Mermaid, with
Uniacke and Stirling as assistants.

As the cutter went up the coast, she called at Port Macquarie, and Oxley
had the pleasure of noting the rapid growth of the settlement that had
been built upon his recommendation. Further along the coast, Oxley
discovered and named the Tweed River. The Mermaid reached Port Curtis on
the 6th of November, and cast anchor for some time, during which Oxley
made a careful examination of the locality, his opinion of it as a site
for a settlement being decidedly unfavourable. He however discovered and
named the Boyne River.

It being considered too late in the season to proceed and examine Port
Bowen, the Mermaid went south again, and entering Moreton Bay, anchored
off the river that appeared to Flinders to take its source in the Glass
House Peaks, and which he had called the Pumice Stone River.

They had scarcely anchored when several natives were seen at a distance,
evidently attracted by their arrival, and on examining them with the
telescope, Uniacke was struck with the appearance of one of a much
lighter colour than that of his companions. The next day Oxley landed and
discovered that the man they had noticed was in reality a castaway white
man of the name of Pamphlet. He told a singular tale.

He had left Sydney in an open boat with three others, intending to go to
the Five Islands and bring back cedar. A terrible gale arose, and they
were blown out to sea and quite out of their reckoning, Pamphlet being
under the impression that they had come ashore south of Port Jackson.
They had suffered fearful hardships in the open boat, being at one time,
he averred, twenty-one days without water, during which time one man died
of thirst. The boat was at last cast up on an island in the bay (Moreton
Island) where they had joined the blacks, and lived amongst them ever
since, a matter of seven months. The other survivors were named Finnegan
and Parsons. Pamphlet informed Oxley that not long before the Mermaid
arrived, the three of them had started to try and reach Sydney overland,
but when they had got about fifty miles, he had turned back and the next
day had been rejoined by Finnegan, who stated that he had quarrelled with
Parsons. The latter was never heard of again.

Finnegan put in an appearance the next day, and