a sandbank extending off three miles
from the eastern side of Preservation Island. Two small rocky islets lie
a mile and a half off the western side of the latter, and several ugly
rocks are scattered along the face of Barren Island, and as far as
Chappell Group; on the outer isle of this group, which is low and level,
the lighthouse bearing North 60 degrees West fifteen miles and a half
forms a very conspicuous object, and is visible to the eye in clear
weather from the top of Preservation Island. Over the northern point of
the latter, towers the summit of Barren Island, forming a sort of double
mount 2300 feet high.

STRAITSMEN.

I found Preservation Island inhabited by an old sealer of the name of
James Monro, generally known as the King of the Eastern Straitsmen.
Another man and three or four native women completed the settlement, if
such a term may be applied. They lived in a few rude huts on a bleak
flat, with scarce a tree near, but sheltered from the west by some low
granite hills; a number of dogs, goats and fowls constituted their
livestock. In this desolate place Monro had been for upwards of
twenty-three years; and many others have lived in similar situations an
equally long period. It is astonishing what a charm such a wild mode of
existence possesses for these men, whom no consideration could induce to
abandon their free, though laborious and somewhat lawless state.

The term sealers is no longer so appropriate as it was formerly; none of
them confining themselves to sealing, in consequence of the increasing
scarcity of the object of their original pursuit. Straitsmen is the name
by which those who inhabit the eastern and western entrance of Bass
Strait are known; they class themselves into Eastern and Western
Straitsmen, and give the following account of their origin: Between the
years 1800 and 1805, the islands in Bass Strait and those fronting the
south coast of Australia, as far westward as the Gulfs of St. Vincent and
Spencer were frequented by sealing vessels from the old and the new
country, if I may use this expression for England and Australia. Many of
their crews became so attached to the islands they were in the habit of
visiting, that when their vessels were about to leave the neighbourhood,
they preferred to remain, taking with them a boat and other stores as
payment for their work. There can be no doubt, however, that their
numbers were afterwards recruited by runaway convicts.

NATIVE WI