ious effects on board the Endeavour.*

[* Hawkesworth, Vol. III. p. 220.,221.]

The weather, unfortunately for my bearings, was so hazy that unless
objects were eminently conspicuous they could not be distinguished beyond
four or five leagues. My list, however, contained forty-five islands and
clusters of rocks, independently of many patches of breakers where
nothing above water appeared; yet most of those in the western part of
the archipelago were invisible, either from their distance or from being
hidden by other lands.

In turning from the view of these complicated dangers to that of the
interior country the prospect was but little improved. Sand and stone,
with the slightest covering of vegetation, every where presented
themselves on the lower lands; and the many shining parts of the sides of
the hills showed them to be still more bare. The vegetation, indeed,
consisted of an abundant variety of shrubs and small plants, and yielded
a delightful harvest to the botanists; but to the herdsmen and cultivator
it promised nothing: not a blade of grass, nor a square yard of soil from
which the seed delivered to it could be expected back, was perceivable by
the eye in its course over these arid plains.

Upon a rock on the side of the hill I found a large nest, very similar to
those seen in King George's Sound. There were in it several masses
resembling those which contain the hair and bones of mice, and are
disgorged by the owls in England after the flesh is digested. These
masses were larger, and consisted of the hair of seals and of land
animals, of the scaly feathers of penguins, and the bones of birds and
small quadrupeds. Possibly the constructor of the nest might be an
enormous owl, and if so, the cause of the bird being never seen, whilst
the nests were not scarce, would be from its not going out until dark;
but from the very open and exposed situations in which the nests were
found, I should rather judge it to be of the eagle kind, and that its
powers are such as to render it heedless of any attempts from the natives
upon its young.

MONDAY 11 JANUARY 1802

On the following morning I sent the master to examine a small bay or cove
lying two miles to the westward of Lucky Bay. He found it to be capable
of receiving one ship, which might be placed in perfect security in the
western corner, with anchors out on the off bow and quarter, and hawsers
on the other side fast to the shore. She would thus lie in from 3 t