hes covered with nutmegs, similar to those
seen at Cape Vanderlin; and in some of the chasms the ground was covered
with this fruit, without our being able, for some time, to know whence it
came. Several trees shot up in these chasms, thirty or forty feet high,
and on considering them attentively, these were found to be the trees
whence the nutmegs had fallen; thus what was a spreading bush above,
became, from the necessity of air and light, a tall, slender tree, and
showed the admirable power in nature to accommodate itself to local
circumstances. The fruit was small, and not of an agreeable flavour; nor
is it probable that it can at all come in competition with the nutmeg of
the Molucca Islands: it is the _Myristica insipida_ of Brown's _Prodrom.
Nov. Holl._ p. 400.

In the steep sides of the chasms were deep holes or caverns, undermining
the cliffs; upon the walls of which I found rude drawings, made with
charcoal and something like red paint upon the white ground of the rock.
These drawings represented porpoises, turtle, kangaroos, and a human
hand; and Mr. Westall, who went afterwards to see them, found the
representation of a kangaroo, with a file of thirty-two persons following
after it. The third person of the band was twice the height of the
others, and held in his hand something resembling the _whaddie_, or
wooden sword of the natives of Port Jackson; and was probably intended to
represent a chief. They could not, as with us, indicate superiority by
clothing or ornament, since they wear none of any kind; and therefore,
with the addition of a weapon, similar to the ancients, they seem to have
made superiority of person the principal emblem of superior power, of
which, indeed, power is usually a consequence in the very early stages of
society.

A sea breeze had sprung up from the eastward, and the ship was under way
when we returned on board at three in the afternoon. At five we hauled
round Chasm Island with 12 fathoms water, which diminished gradually as
we proceeded up the bay, to 41/2, where the anchor was dropped on a muddy
bottom; the south-west end of Chasm Island then bore N. 16 deg. E., three or
four miles, and the cliffy end of a smaller isle on the west side of the
entrance, N. 29 deg. W. two miles and a half; and except between these two
bearings, we were sheltered from all winds. The situation of this bay in
Groote Eylandt, led me to give it the name of _North-west Bay_. It is
formed on the east an