n it
than further westward. The wind was fresh at south-west, and the mercury
was rising; but the haziness of the weather was such that no extremes of
the land could be set.

Our course from noon was nearly east at the distance of five or six miles
from the shore; and we ran at the rate of between seven and eight knots,
under double-reefed top-sails and foresail. Abreast of our situation at
half-past two the level bank again closed in upon the shore, and formed
cliffs very similar to those along which we had before run thirty
leagues. Their elevation appeared to be from four to six hundred feet,
the upper part was brown, and the lower two-thirds white; but as we
advanced, the upper brown _stratum _was observed to augment in
proportional quantity. We could not distinguish, as before, the smaller
layers in the two _strata_; and from the number of excavations in the
white part, apparently from pieces having fallen down (see Mr. Westall's
sketch, Atlas, Plate XVII. View 6.), I was led to think the lower portion
of these cliffs to be grit stone rather than calcareous rock. The bank
was not covered with shrubs, as before it came to the water side, but was
nearly destitute of vegetation, and almost as level as the horizon of the
sea.

At dusk we hauled up south-east-by-south to the wind, at one in the
morning [WEDNESDAY 27 JANUARY 1802] tacked to the westward, and at four
bore away north for the land. Having reached within six miles of the
cliffs, we steered eastward again, with a fair breeze; and at noon were
in latitude 31 deg. 40' 52' and longitude 130 deg. 59'; the cliffs were then
distant seven miles to the northward, and at N. 9 deg. E. was their
termination.

The length of these cliffs, from their second commencement, is
thirty-three leagues; and that of the level bank, from near Cape Pasley
where it was first seen from the sea, is no less than _one hundred and
forty-five leagues_. The height of this extraordinary bank is nearly the
same throughout, being no where less, by estimation, than four hundred,
nor any where more than six hundred feet. In the first twenty leagues the
ragged tops of some inland mountains were visible over it; but during the
remainder of its long course the bank was the limit of our view.

This equality of elevation for so great an extent, and the evidently
calcareous nature of the bank, at least in the upper two hundred feet,
would bespeak it to have been the exterior line of a vast coral re