comparison with the
stage above and the stage below our own. The circumstances which
occasioned this difference between the people of two countries so near to
each other, and so much alike in their natural productions, must remain
hidden from our observation, until perhaps some permanent European
settlement shall be made in Van Diemen's land.

The range of the thermometer, taken in various parts of the port, was at
night from 49 degrees to 52 degrees, and at noon from 58 degrees to 64
degrees.

On the 20th of November they left Port Dalrymple with a light breeze at
NE and proceeded very slowly to the westward. At daylight the following
morning, the wind shifted to the W by N which drove them back to
Furneaux's islands, where, the gale continuing at west, they were kept
until the 3rd of December, when they were enabled to proceed to the
westward. The land here trended to the WNW as far as was visible through
the haze, which allowed them only to distinguish that it was high and
uneven. At noon the latitude was 40 degrees 58 minutes, and the longitude
146 degrees 44 minutes. Their progress was slow, and unavoidably at too
great a distance from the shore to form any just idea of the country; but
what was seen of it appeared high and mountainous, the mountains forming
into hummocks and low peaks, to which a few large shapeless knobs added a
great singularity of appearance. On the haze clearing away, and the shore
being distinctly seen, it appeared rocky, but wooded nearly down to the
water's edge. Here and there were seen spaces of open ground, some of
which sloped toward the sea, and had a few large trees growing
irregularly upon them. A remarkable peaked mountain, some few miles
inland, might have been thought, from its shape and height, to have been
once a volcano. A very singular lump of high level, or table land, lay at
a few miles to the westward in the coast line; and at some distance
beyond it, a point appeared with three knobs of land lying off it,
resembling islands. This land was named Table Cape.

To the extreme eastern point of this land, a fine easterly breeze had
brought them at daylight of the 6th; when they found that what they had
on the preceding evening taken to be islands were three lumps or ridges
of the point itself, lessening in bulk as they advanced toward its
seaward extremity. The very uncommon figure of this point may perhaps be
best conceived by comparing it to a spear with several barbs. It wa