hese
names appear in the Admiralty charts, but they are assigned to the wrong
places. To a ship coming from the eastward the Cape Rodney of the charts
is not conspicuous enough to have attracted Edwards' attention. The Cape
Hood of the charts, on the contrary, cannot be mistaken, and it lies
exactly in the position which Edwards gave for Cape Rodney. The "Cape
Hood" that Edwards saw was undoubtedly Round Head, and his Mount Clarence
must have been the high cone between them in the Saroa district. The
_Pandora_ must have approached on one of those misty mornings when the
clouds creep down the mountain sides of New Guinea, and obscure the
ranges that rise, tier upon tier, right up to the towering peak of Mount
Victoria, or Edwards could not have mistaken the continent for the
insignificant islands of the Louisiades. On such a morning a narrow line
of coast stands out clear against a background of sombre fog.

The baleful fortune of the _Pandora_, now folded her wings and perched
upon the taffrail. By hugging the coast of New Guinea she would have won
a clear passage through these wreck-strewn straits of Torres, but the
navigators of those days counted on clear water to Endeavour Straits, and
recked little of the dangers of the Great Barrier reef. Bligh, who
chanced upon a passage in 12.34 S. Lat. so aptly that he called it
"Providential Channel," cautioned future navigators in words that should
have warned Edwards against the course he was steering. "These, however,
are marks too small for a ship to hit, unless it can hereafter be
ascertained that passages through the reef are numerous along the coast."
Edwards was not looking for Bligh's passage, which lay more than two
degrees southward of his course. He had lately adopted a most dangerous
practice of running blindly on through the night. Until he made the coast
of New Guinea, he had profited by the warning of Bougainville, the only
navigator whose book he seems to have studied, and always lay to till
daylight, but now, in the most dangerous sea in the world, he threw this
obvious precaution to the wind. Hamilton, to whom we are indebted for
this information (for it did not transpire at the court martial) says
that "the great length of the voyage would not permit it." How fatuous a
proceeding it was in unsurveyed and unknown waters may be judged from the
fact that in coral seas that have been carefully surveyed all ships of
war are now compelled to keep the lead going wh