eaward nothing but broken water could be seen, and half a
gale of wind blew from the south by east. The bad and insufficient food I
had been compelled to eat had brought on violent sickness and other evil
effects, and I found myself very ill. As the daylight advanced report
after report came to me that some one of the party had been attacked by
the same diseases experienced by Mr. Smith and myself.

EXAMINATION OF THE SHORE TO THE NORTHWARD, AND OF THE COUNTRY TO THE
SOUTH-EAST.

I was only well enough to write and survey a little, but I sent off a
party to a point which lay about six miles to the north of us, and they
on their return reported that there was a continuation of a similar shore
for the next fourteen or fifteen miles, bordered in like manner by sandy
muddy plains similar to those behind the hills where we were.

This party found one of the yellow and black water-snakes asleep upon a
piece of dry seaweed on the beach and killed it. The fact of this animal
being found on shore proves its amphibious character. I saw them in one
instance, in December 1837, so far out at sea as to be distant 150 miles
from land.

Sunday March 10.

I spent a wretched night from illness and foul weather; the roaring of
the surf on the shore was so loud and incessant that to one feverish and
in want of quiet and rest it was a positive distress, and both Mr. Smith,
myself, and half the men were at this time seriously indisposed. We had
strong gales of wind all day from south by east, but in the afternoon I
walked out for five miles in an east-south-east direction with such of
the men as were able to move; nothing however could be seen but a
continuation of the same barren, treeless country; we observed no signs
of natives except tracks in the mud of a single man who had passed some
months ago.

It annoyed me now to find that the silvering of the glasses of my large
sextant was so much injured from the constant wettings it had experienced
that this day it was almost useless. I had hoped in the course of our
walk to have fallen in with some game, but we did not see a single bird
with the exception of some small ones, about the size of tomtits, which
flew from bush to bush along the sandhills.

SUFFERINGS FROM HEAT AND PRIVATION.

We had a small quantity of portable soup with us, nearly all of which we
used, and it in some degree restored us, but another miserable night was
passed by us all and in the morning I was grieved to