andy coast, on which the sea broke heavily. Cape Joubert,**
distant sixteen miles, was the last projection of any kind we passed.

(*Footnote. The longitudes depend on the meridian of Coepang. which has
been considered in 123 degrees 37 minutes 0 seconds East.)

(**Footnote. In latitude 18 degrees 58 minutes South and longitude 121
degrees 42 minutes East. It is crested with bare white sand, and although
only forty-five feet high is a remarkable headland on this low coast.)

APPEARANCE OF NORTH-WEST COAST.

From that headland commenced a low, wearisome, sandy shore, which we
traced for sixty-five miles in a South-West by West direction, looking in
vain for some change in its character. Nothing beyond the coast
sand-dunes, sprinkled with vegetation, and only twenty feet high, could
be seen from the masthead, although the ship was within three miles of
the beach. This cheerless aspect was heightened by the total absence of
native fires, a fact we had never before observed in such an extent of
country, and truly significant of its want of fertility. Still, in our
sight it possessed a greater charm than it may, probably, in that of
others; as every fresh mile of coast that disclosed itself, rewarding our
enterprise whilst it disappointed our expectations, was so much added to
the domains of geography. That such an extent of the Australian continent
should have been left to be added to the portion of the globe discovered
by the Beagle was remarkable; and although day by day our hopes of
accomplishing any important discovery declined, a certain degree of
excitement was kept alive throughout.

It was the 13th before we had made good the distance I have above
mentioned, when a reddish hillock, of fifty-six feet in elevation, in
latitude 19 degrees 48 minutes South, and longitude 120 degrees 36
minutes East, promising a view of the interior, we went to visit it.
There was less surf on the beach than we expected, and we landed without
much difficulty. Our old friend, the black and white red-bill, or
oyster-catcher, was in readiness to greet us, accompanied by a few
families of sanderlings, two or three batches of grey plovers, and a
couple of small curlews. Crossing the beach, a line of reddish sandstone
cliffs, twelve feet in height, was ascended, and found to face a bank of
sand, held together by a sort of coarse spinifex. This bank, which ran
parallel to the coast, was narrow, subsiding into a valley three quarters
of a mi