re the guanacos (a kind of llama)
assemble to pay the debt of nature, and leave their bones to whiten the
surface of the plain. Never before, on any occasion, had we seen dead
turtles in any similar position; how they could have got there was a
mystery, unless we suppose them to have been thrown up by some earthquake
wave. They had evidently not been transported thither by the hand of man,
though, as I have observed, some of the natives who thinly inhabit this
district, finding them there, ready to their hand, had availed themselves
of the gifts of fortune. I could not help, as I gazed on this remarkable
scene, calling to mind the marvellous elephant cemetery described by
Sinbad the Sailor. It is possible that the observation of some similar
phenomenon may have suggested to the imagination of the authors of the
Thousand and One Nights their romantic fiction. At any rate an air of
mystery will always hang round Turtle Point until the facts I have
mentioned shall have been explained.

(*Footnote. A specimen of one of them was brought away and deposited in
the Museum at Sydney.)

The nature of this part of the country I have before described on my
visit to Indian Hill. A ridge of breakers ran off north a couple of miles
from our station; a low point, bearing West 16 degrees South about eight
or nine miles, with an opening trending in south intervening, with some
slightly elevated land bearing South 34 degrees West about four or five
leagues, terminated our view to the westward. We found the tide much
weaker on this side of the entrance, not exceeding three miles an hour;
the stream ran up three-quarters of an hour after high-water. The times
of high-water for the last three days had been most unaccountably the
same.

December 5.

Crossed over to Point Pearce at daylight, but the wind being light all
the morning did not reach an anchorage till the afternoon; the extreme of
the point bearing North 41 degrees West three-quarters of a mile. A line
of ripplings extended a couple of miles off to the south-west of it, in
which we found there was only four fathoms. In standing across the
entrance we passed first a bank of three fathoms, with six and seven on
each side; Turtle Point bearing South 45 degrees West 11 miles; then two
more, one of seven and eight fathoms, with twelve and seventeen on each
side, the other of only two fathoms with twelve on the south, and twenty
on the north side.

MERMAID BANK.

We subsequently