e above observation for the latitude of the North-West Cape
agreeing nearly with those of our former voyage, I was induced to think
that there might be some land more to the northward that the French saw
and took for the cape; for they have placed it in 21 degrees 37 minutes 7
seconds South, which is nearly 10 minutes too northerly. Captain
Horsburgh, in the supplement to his Directory, notices some islands seen
by the San Antonio in 1818, called Piddington's Islands, that are said to
lie in the latitude of 21 degrees 36 minutes, but after steering
seventeen miles to the North-East from the above situation, without
seeing anything like land, there remained no doubt in my mind that the
French must have been deceived and that Piddington's Islands are some of
the low, sandy islets to the eastward of Muiron Island.

January 30.

Having steered through the night on a north-east course, Barrow's Island
came in sight the next morning, when it was about five leagues off; at
eight o'clock it bore between South 27 East and North 87 degrees East.
From noon to three p.m. we had calm, dull, and cloudy weather; and
although the thermometer did not range higher than 87 degrees, the heat
was extremely oppressive, and occasioned the death of three of our
turtles. At three o'clock a breeze springing up from the westward enabled
us to steer to the northward round the Montebello Islands, in doing which
we saw nothing of Hermite Island, which the French have laid down as the
westernmost island of that group. There is certainly no land to the
westward of Trimouille Island; and the error can only be accounted for by
Captain Baudin's having seen the latter at two different periods; indeed
this conjecture is in some measure proved, since there is a considerable
reef running off the north-west end of that island, which in the French
chart is attached to Hermite Island; this reef might not have been seen
by him at his first visit, and when he made the land again and observed
the reef he must have concluded it to have been a second island.

After steering a north course until seven o'clock and deepening the water
to sixty-five fathoms, we gradually hauled round the north end of the
Montebello Isles; and at eleven p.m. steered East; but at two o'clock,
having decreased the depth from seventy-two to forty-one fathoms, we
steered off to the northward until daylight, and then to the
East-South-East, in order to anchor in the Mermaid's Strait to the