, from which we have
wandered at some considerable length.

As the duration of our cruise on the north-west and most interesting
portions of the coast, depended in a great measure on the supply of
provisions to be obtained at Port Essington, we were naturally anxious to
satisfy ourselves upon the point, and accordingly spent but a few hours
at Booby Island, taking our departure at 8 P.M. on the day of our
arrival.

PROCEED TO PORT ESSINGTON.

Proceeding towards Port Essington, we experienced a constant current
setting between North-West and West, from half to three quarters of a
knot an hour, except when crossing the mouth of the Gulf of Carpentaria,
when from the indraught its direction was changed to West-South-West. The
winds were as Captain King has described them, veering from
South-South-East in the morning, to East in the evening, and blowing
fresh towards the middle of the day.

Beyond this nothing occurred worthy of remark, until the morning of the
17th, when soon after daylight we found ourselves steering rather within
a large patch of discoloured water, extending off Cape Croker, the
North-East extreme of the Coburg Peninsula, a low point with a slight
hummock on it; on the north side of this peninsula is situated Port
Essington, thirty miles to the westward of the Cape.

CAPE CROKER REEF.

The light-coloured water off the latter, we knew indicated the reef
discovered by the brig Tigris, belonging to the Indian navy, which in
company with the New South Wales colonial schooner, Isabella, was
returning from rescuing the survivors of the Charles Eaton, from the
natives of Murray Island. When half a mile from the North-East side, in
22 fathoms rocky bottom, Cape Croker, bearing South 29 degrees East six
miles; we steered out, keeping at the same distance round this patch of
light water in twenty and twenty-one fathoms, seven or eight miles from
the Cape, which bore when over what appeared the shoalest part, South 42
degrees East.

This conclusion I afterwards found, on meeting Captain Stanley, to be
correct, as that bearing led over the part of the reef he struck on in
H.M.S. Britomart. But being on the inner part he was distant only three
miles from Cape Croker, whilst the outer edge of the reef I believe to be
seven miles from it on the same bearing. In hauling up to the southward,
round the North-West extreme of the discoloured water, the soundings were
as follows, 17, 12, and 19 fathoms, with rocky b