1803.
January.
Friday 14.
white ground of the rock. These drawings represented porpoises, turtle, kanguroos, and a human hand; and Mr. Westall, who went afterwards to see them, found the representation of a kanguroo, 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 4½, where the anchor was dropped on a muddy bottom; the south-west end of Chasm Island then bore N. 16° E., three or four miles, and the cliffy end of a smaller isle on the west side of the entrance, N. 29° 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 and south by that island; and on the west by a separate piece of land, five or six miles long, which, in honour of the noble possessor of Burley Park, in the county of Rutland, I named Winchilsea Island; and a small isle of greater elevation, lying a short mile to the east of the ship, was called Finch's Island.
Saturday 15.Early next morning the botanists landed on Groote Eylandt, and I went to Finch's Island with the second lieutenant, to take bearings and astronomical observations. From the western head, I saw that the bay extended six or eight miles above the ship, to the southward, and that the southern outlet, beyond Winchilsea Island,