1802.
July.
Saturday 24.
Cook; its centre lies in 30° 55′ south, and 153° 4′ east. The three hummocks upon it stand on so many projecting parts; and at half a mile from the southernmost lie two rocks, and a third two miles further south, which were not before noticed. On the north side of Smoky Cape, the coast falls back four or five miles to the westward, forming a bight in the low land, where there may probably be a shallow inlet; it afterwards resumed a northern direction, and consisted as before of sandy beaches and stony points.
Our consort was not yet in sight; but we kept on until five in the evening, when the nearest land was two miles off, and the northern hummock on Smoky Cape bore S. 4° W. nine leagues. I had before seen the coast further northward, as far as 29° 20′; and having therefore no inducement to lose a night's run for its examination, we steered onward, passing without side of the Solitary Isles. At three in the morning,Sunday 25. hove to until day-light; and at eight o'clock made the south head of a bay discovered in the Norfolk (Introd. p. cxciv), and named Shoal Bay. One of the marks for finding this small place is a peaked hummock on the low land, thirteen miles distant; and it was now set over the south head of the bay at S. 20° W. In steering northward close along the coast, we passed two small reefs, and the water shoaled to 10 fathoms; they lie two miles off the land, and there did not seem to be any safe passage within them. Our latitude at noon was 29° 4′, and longitude by time keepers 153° 31′; the shore was three miles off, but until we came up with Cape Byron at five in the evening, there was no projection worthy of being particularly noticed. From Shoal Bay to Cape Byron is fifty miles, where the coast, with the exception of two or three rocky heads, is mostly low and sandy; and the soundings, at from two to four miles off, vary between 10 and 32 fathoms, on a sandy bottom. A few miles back the land rises to hills of moderate elevation, which were poorly covered with wood in the southern part, but towards the cape had a more fertile appearance.
Cape Byron is a small steep head, projecting about two miles