draw his portrait.

From the same source from which the particulars of his death were
obtained, it was reported that the natives who perpetrated the deed
were influenced by no other motive than curiosity to ascertain if they
had power to kill a white man. But we must be careful in giving credit
to this, for it is much more probable that the cruelties exercised by
the sealers towards the blacks along the south coast, may have
instigated the latter to take vengeance on the innocent as well as on
the guilty. It will be seen, by a reference to the chart, that Captain
Barker, by crossing the channel, threw himself into the very hands of
that tribe which had evinced such determined hostility to myself and my
men. He got into the rear of their strong hold, and was sacrificed to
those feelings of suspicion, and to that desire of revenge, which the
savages never lose sight of until they have been gratified.

FEATURES OF THE COUNTRY, AND CAPABILITIES OF THE COAST.

It yet remains for me to state that when Mr. Kent returned to the
schooner, after this irreparable loss, he kept to the south of the
place at which he had crossed the first range with Captain Barker, and
travelled through a valley right across the promontory. He thus
discovered 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 K