deep water, and anchored in 4 fathoms, on a
bottom of blue mud. The bad state of the ship would have made our
situation amongst these rocks very alarming, had we not cleared them so
quickly; but the water was very smooth at this time, and it could not be
perceived that any injury had been sustained.

Our distance here from the shore was three miles. It is very low and
broken, with many dry rocks and banks lying near it; and in the space of
seven or eight miles we had counted five small openings, and behind them
some lagoons were perceived from the mast head. _The Abel Tasman's River_
of the old chart is marked in about this situation; and however little
these shallow openings and salt lagoons resemble a river, there is no
other place to which the name could have been applied.

I was preparing to take altitudes of the star _Rigel_, to ascertain our
longitude at this anchorage, when it was found that the time keepers had
stopped, my assistant having forgotten to wind them up at noon. In the
morning [SUNDAY 12 DECEMBER 1802] they were set forward, and altitudes of
the sun taken to find their errors from the time under this meridian. The
moon and planet Mars had been observed in the night, from which, and the
noon's observation following, the latitude of the anchorage was
ascertained to be 16 deg. 71/2'; and a projection on the west side of the R.
Van Alphen, which had been the nearest shore at the preceding noon, was
now set at S. 641/2 deg. E. From these _data_ and from the log, I ascertained
the difference of longitude, from half past ten in the morning of the
11th, when the last observations for the time keepers had been taken, to
be 20' 18"; and that this anchorage was in 137 deg. 37' 18" east. The errors
from mean Greenwich time were thence obtained; and they were carried on
as before, with the rates found at Sweers' Island, which it was to be
presumed, had undergone no alteration from the letting down, since none
had been caused by former accidents of the same kind. An amplitude taken
when the ship's head was W. N. W., gave variation 3 deg. 46', or 1 deg. 47' east,
corrected to the meridian; being nearly a degree less than on the east
side of the River Van Alphen, when the land lay to the west of the ship.

Soon after seven o'clock the anchor was weighed; and the breeze being at
N. W., we stretched off till noon, when the observed latitude from both
sides was 16 deg. 2' 11", and the land was nine or ten miles distan