them, and utensils, which must have belonged to some of the people before
seen, since there was boiled rice in one of the baskets. We took up our
quarters here for the night, keeping a good watch; but nothing was seen
of the Indians till we pushed off from the shore in the morning [SUNDAY 2
MAY 1802], when seven showed themselves upon a hill behind the huts. They
ran down to examine their habitations, and finding every thing as they
had left it, a little water excepted of which we were in want, they
seemed satisfied; and for a short time three of them followed the boat.

Along the north-east and east sides of Indented Head I found the water to
be shoal for nearly a mile off; but on approaching the entrance of what
Mr. Murray called Swan Harbour, but which I have taken the liberty to
converting into _Swan Pond_, it became somewhat deeper. Seeing swans
there, I rowed into it after them, but found the place full of mud banks,
and seldom more than three or four feet in depth. Three of the birds were
caught; and at the south side of the entrance, upon the sandy peninsula,
or island as it is when the tide is in, I shot some delicate teal, and
found fresh water in small ponds.

The ship was lying about three miles within the mouth of the port, near
to the south shore; and after I had taken bearings at two stations on the
sandy peninsula, we steered a straight course for her, sounding all the
way. It appeared that there was a passage up the port of a mile wide
between the middle banks and the western shore, with a depth in it from 3
to 41/2 fathoms. On the western extremity of the banks I had 21/2 fathoms,
and afterwards 5, 7, 4, 7, 8, 9, 9 to the ship.

Lieutenant Fowler had had a good deal of difficulty in getting back to
the entrance of the port; owing in part to the western winds, and partly
from the shoals, which do not seem to lie in any regular order. He had
touched upon one of these, where there was ten feet on one side of the
ship, and on the other 5 fathoms. This seems to have been a more eastern
part of the same shoal upon which we had before grounded; but no danger
is to be feared from these banks to a flat-floored ship.

I find it very difficult to speak in general terms of Port Phillip. On
the one hand it is capable of receiving and sheltering a larger fleet of
ships than ever yet went to sea; whilst on the other, the entrance, in
its whole width, is scarcely two miles, and nearly half of it is occupied
by the