ered that
there was a division in the ranges, through which there was a direct and
level road from the little bay on the northern extremity of which they had
last landed in St. Vincent's Gulf, to the rocky point of Encounter Bay.
The importance of this fact will be better estimated, when it is known
that good anchorage is secured to small vessels inside the island that
lies off the point of Encounter Bay, which is rendered still safer by a
horse shoe reef that forms, as it were, a thick wall to break the swell of
the sea. But this anchorage is not safe for more than five months in the
year. Independently of these points, however, Mr. Kent remarks, that the
spit a little to the north of Mount Lofty would afford good shelter to
minor vessels under its lee. When the nature of the country is taken into
consideration, and the facility of entering that which lies between the
ranges and the Lake Alexandrina, from the south, and of a direct
communication with the lake itself, the want of an extensive harbour will,
in some measure, be compensated for, more especially when it is known that
within four leagues of Cape Jervis, a port little inferior to Port
Jackson, with a safe and broad entrance, exists at Kangaroo Island. The
sealers have given this spot the name of American Harbour. In it, I am
informed, vessels are completely land-locked, and secure from every wind.
Kangaroo Island is not, however, fertile by any means. It abounds in
shallow lakes filled with salt water during high tides, and which, by
evaporation, yield a vast quantity of salt.

I gathered from the sealers that neither the promontory separating
St. Vincent from Spencer's Gulf, nor the neighbourhood of Port Lincoln,
are other than barren and sandy wastes. They all agree in describing Port
Lincoln itself as a magnificent roadstead, but equally agree as to the
sterility of its shores. It appears, therefore, that the promontory of
Cape Jervis owes its superiority to its natural features; in fact, to the
mountains that occupy its centre, to the debris that has been washed from
them, and to the decomposition of the better description of its rocks.
Such is the case at Illawarra, where the mountains approach the sea; such
indeed is the case every where, at a certain distance from mountain
ranges.

ADAPTION OF THIS PART OF THE COUNTRY FOR COLONISATION.

From the above account it would appear that a spot has, at length, been
found upon the south coast of New Holland,