hen the coast trended to the south-eastward under Mounts Bedwell and
Roe, where the land was lost to view. To the westward the land was
observed trending in a north and south direction, and bore the appearance
of being an island.

The ebb now commenced setting out, and although we were going three knots
through the water, we made no progress over the ground. Seven miles West
by South from Cape Don we sounded in fifty fathoms on a bottom of
branch-coral, and four miles more to the westward we had but nineteen
fathoms. When the flood commenced, it was too dark to profit by it.

April 27.

And no progress was made until the next morning, when, having a fresh
breeze, we reached an anchorage in a bay on the north side, and close
under the base of Mount Bedwell. On our way we steered through strong
tide-ripplings in which, at times, notwithstanding the strength of the
breeze, the cutter was quite ungovernable. Off the bay is a low mangrove
island which I had the pleasure to name after the Reverend James W.
Burford, of Stratford, Essex, and the bay in which we had anchored was
called after W. Aiton, Esquire, of the Royal Gardens at Kew.

The bottom of Aiton Bay is shoal and apparently terminates in an inlet or
creek; at low water the tide left a considerable space dry that appeared
to extend from shore to shore.

Our distance from the beach was so short that the howlings of dogs were
distinctly heard, and other noises were distinguished which some of us
thought were made by natives, but they were more probably the screams of
birds.

April 28.

At daylight the next morning we steered round the land, and passing under
the base of Mount Roe, we entered a strait that separates it from
Greenhill Island; which is remarkable for having its north-west end
terminated by a conspicuous bluff. The coast now took an easterly
direction as far as the eye could reach, with a channel of from three to
eight miles broad between it and a range of islands (which were named in
compliment to the late Vice-Admiral Sir George Hope, K.C.B., then holding
a seat in the Board of Admiralty). At noon the tide began to ebb, when we
anchored near the land at about six miles east of Mount Roe.

The thermometer now ranged between 80 and 90 degrees, but the heat was by
no means oppressive.

April 29.

By the next day at noon we had penetrated four leagues within Sir George
Hope's Islands, when the water became so shoal that we could not approach
an