INNER PASSAGE.

"After reaching Lady Elliot's Island, we steered a course direct for the
High Peak of the Northumberland Islands, so as to pass between Bunker's
Group and Swain's Reef, which affords a far better entrance into the
Inner Passage, than the old route round Breaksea Spit inside the Bunker
Group; when the course requires to be changed, and the channel is much
narrower. We sounded every half hour without finding bottom, with from 80
to 120 fathoms, till we came to the soundings laid down by the Fly, which
we found to agree almost exactly with ours.

"Our soundings were obtained by using Massey's patent lead, with which we
found we could reach the bottom at twenty-six fathoms, when the ship was
going 9.2 knots an hour; and with such a guide any error in the reckoning
would be detected, even by night, as the Bunker Group gives warning by
the soundings. For a steamer going to Sydney by the Inner Route, this
channel would be invaluable as far as the Pine Peak of the Percy Isles.
One direct course will lead out to sea clear of all the reefs, a distance
of more than 200 miles, during which period there would be ample time to
ascertain by observations of the sun, whether any current had been
experienced sufficient to place the ship in danger, and, as the channel
between Swain's Reef and the Bunker Group appears to be clear, there is a
drift of thirty miles on each side the course from the High Peak."

May 15th.

After having at daylight sighted the land about Port Bowen and Cape
Townshend, we passed the Northumberland and Percy Isles to the westward,
the water being very smooth with light airs from South to
East-North-East. A very offensive smell which has been experienced in the
after part of the ship for a week back, was today traced to some
preserved meats prepared in Sydney; 1036 pounds of these being found
quite putrid were condemned.*

(*Footnote. It is but justice to state here that the English invention of
preserving meat in air-tight canisters had only recently been attempted
in Sydney; and it was then to be regarded merely as an experiment to try
whether a new and important article of colonial export could not be
produced. Since then, further experience in the process has enabled the
introducers of the plan to succeed so perfectly, that afterwards, the
colonial preserved meats supplied to the Rattlesnake, including some
which had been kept for eighteen months, were always preferred by us to
those prepa