18 minutes, and longitude 132 degrees
53 minutes 5 seconds.
MOUNTNORRIS BAY extends between Cape Cockburn and Cape Croker, it is
twenty-eight miles wide, and twenty-three deep. It contains several
islands, and is also fronted by a group, of which New Year's Island, the
latitude of whose centre is 10 degrees 55 minutes, and longitude 133
degrees 0 minutes 36 seconds, is the outermost; the others are named
Oxley, Lawson, McCluer, Grant, Templer, and Cowlard. They are straggling,
and have wide and apparently deep channels between them. Between New
Year's and McCluer's Islands, the channel is nearly eight miles wide and
eighteen and nineteen fathoms deep. A reef extends off the north-west end
of the latter island for nearly three miles, and the ground is rocky and
shoal for some distance off the north-east end of Oxley's Island. Grant's
Island is higher than the others, which are merely small woody islets,
the centre is in 11 degrees 10 minutes.
At the north-east end of Mountnorris Bay is MALAY BAY which is four miles
wide and six deep; it affords good anchorage in four and five fathoms in
the centre: as it offered no other inducement, we did not land upon any
part of it. Between Valentia Island and Point Annesley, the channel is
more than a mile wide and four fathoms deep. VALENTIA ISLAND has a reef
off its north point, and another off its south-east point, each about a
mile in extent.
COPELAND ISLAND is small and wedge-shaped, its summit is in latitude 11
degrees 28 minutes, and longitude 132 degrees 43 minutes; four miles and
a quarter West-North-West from it is a covered sandbank having nine feet
water near its edge; it was not quite certain whether it was joined to
the land or not, from which it is distant two miles and a half.
On the western side of the bay there is a strait two miles wide
separating Croker's Island from the main; it is ten or eleven miles in
length, and is navigable since the Malay fleet were observed to pass
through it.
CROKER'S ISLAND is twenty-one miles and a quarter from north to south,
and from two to five broad, its northern extremity is in 10 degrees 58
minutes 30 seconds latitude, and 132 degrees 34 minutes 10 seconds
longitude; about three-quarters of a mile within it there is a remarkable
rocky knob: its south extreme is in 11 degrees 19 1/4 minutes.
PALM BAY, on its western side, is an excellent anchorage in the easterly
monsoon; it is four miles and a half wide, and nearly thr
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