t: the greatest rise
noticed in the ship was thirty feet, which was seven feet less than we
had found it in the yawl.

We had several heavy squalls from eastward this afternoon, and during the
early part of the night, with rain and thunder.

March 15.

The morning broke dull and gloomy, with a light breeze from the eastward.
There were altogether evident symptoms of a decided and immediate change
in the weather. The survey of the south-eastern portion of the sound
being now complete, the ship was taken over to the high rocky land lying
north 20 miles from Point Torment. We crossed the flat extending four
miles North-West from that point, in from two to three fathoms at
low-water; the soundings afterwards varied from nine to eleven fathoms
with a soft, muddy sand bottom. We anchored in seven fathoms low-water,
one mile and a half South-South-West from the southern of two small rocky
islets, lying 16 miles north from Point Torment and three from the rocky
shore behind them; a sandbank, dry at low-water, extended from these
islets to within half a mile of the ship.

CHANGE OF LANDSCAPE.

Our eyes were now relieved by a pleasing change of landscape; the land
had wholly changed in character from that of which we had seen so much
and grown so weary. It no longer stretched away in an illimitable and
boundless plain, but rising abruptly from the water's edge, attained an
elevation of 700 feet. The highest part of this range (afterwards named
Compass Hill) bore North by West distant four and a quarter miles. We
were all of course exceedingly anxious to visit this new land; but the
weather, strange to say, put our patience to a trial of four days, during
which it equalled in severity any we had experienced under Swan Point. It
commenced with dark masses of clouds rising in the east, which were soon
followed by a fresh breeze from the South-East with heavy rain, gradually
freshening as it came round to the westward, blowing hardest between
West-South-West and West-North-West. The barometer being out of order we
were unable to observe how this unusual change would have affected that
instrument; the thermometer, however, fell to 76 degrees, an alteration
of temperature which, combined with the dampness of the atmosphere,
exposed us to the novel sensation of cold. We noticed the time of
high-water was about fifteen minutes earlier than at Point Torment, the
flood-stream setting East-South-East and the ebb west. The former at a