John Lort Stokes

“ Most of the men, moreover, experience a constant yearning for home, which, yearly increasing, terminates in despondency, and leaves them open to the attacks of disease. Scorbutic symptoms were at one period very prevalent, arising principally from the poor form of diet; similar cases occurred in a former settlement on that part of the coast, from the same causes; but although Port Essington has been of late visited by sickness, I do not consider it by any means an unhealthy spot. ”

“ Without data of this kind it is impossible, with any pretensions to accuracy, to estimate the probable future importance of our settlement at Port Essington, the value of which does not depend on the fertility of Cobourg Peninsula, any more than that of Gibraltar on the productiveness of the land within the Spanish lines. Victoria, if we regard its own intrinsic worth, might be blotted out of the list of our possessions without any material detriment to our interests ”

“ There is no anchorage between Pantar and Ombaye; but on the south side of Timor, at the mouth of the Naminie River, and twenty-five miles further eastward, and also at the east point, inside the small island of Pulo Jackie, there are good anchorages in from 10 to 15 fathoms. The southern coast of Timor is washed by heavy surf in either monsoon. Arrangements were immediately made for watering the ship, by having the barecas filled and carried to the boats by persons from the shore, thereby saving our crew from exposure in this, I believe at all times, unhealthy climate. ”

“ The natives in the neighbourhood of Port Essington are, like all others on the continent, very superstitious; they fancy that a large kind of tree, called the Imburra-burra, resembling the Adansonia, contains evil spirits. Here, also, as I have elsewhere observed, they fancy that after death they reappear as whites; the bones of the dead are frequently carried from place to place. ”

“ Small, low, thatched cottages, in a temperature much too warm for Europeans to labour in constantly, are apt to engender disease. There is, besides, a mangrove swamp immediately behind the settlement, which at present decreases its salubrity. With regard to the range of the thermometer, it has been known as low as 62°, and it is never so high, by ten or twenty°, as I have seen it in S. Australia during the hot winds: the average, however, is about 83°. ”

“ But as we were forced away from the land by southerly winds as we approached the N.W. Cape, and as there was no certainty of procuring water, I have been obliged to content myself with the report of a whaler who went in there and found it to be the mouth of a large inlet conveying a vast body of water into the interior, occasionally, I imagine, even as far as the neighbourhood of the north-east shore of Shark's Bay, as Captain Grey speaks of finding there extensive plains of mud and sand, at times evidently flooded by the sea and presenting no limit in a north-east direction. ”

“ The mode in which trade is carried on with the wild natives of Timor is extremely singular. The goods intended for barter are left in parcels on the shore; the natives come down and place against them, generally, bees' wax, and a kind of cotton cloth, to the amount which they conceive to be the value, when they also retire. The trader returns, and if satisfied, takes the native's goods, leaving his own ”

“ It appears that on leaving Victoria he proceeded to the south-west side of the Peninsula, and followed the shore to the neck, when taking an east direction he crossed it, and then pursuing a northerly course made his way to Middle Head, on the side of the harbour opposite the settlement. The frequent opportunities Lieutenant Stewart had of determining his positions by cross-bearings of the islands, leave no doubt as to the correctness of his route. The reports of late sent in respecting the climate have, in some measure, been unfavourable ”

“ Bynoe, on the climate of Northern Australia, corroborate the views put forward in the text: "I find on a reference to the Medical Journals, as well as to a Meteorological table kept by me during a period of six years, on the coasts of Australia, and under every variety of climate, that we had no diseases peculiar to that continent, and I am led to believe it a remarkably healthy country. ”

“ No European has ever yet penetrated any great distance beyond the neck that connects Cobourg Peninsula with the mainland; and even the report of the existence of the settlement has scarcely travelled farther. At least in 1841, when Lieutenant Vallack visited one of the Alligator rivers he found the natives completely ignorant that we had established ourselves in their neighbourhood. ”

“ We are still reduced to base our opinions on conjecture and hypothesis; we know nothing of the amount of commerce that might be carried on with the islands of the Indian Archipelago—nothing of the productions of the mainland—nothing of the extent to which colonization might be carried in the neighbourhood. ”

“ Fitzmaurice's great sufferings by a little rest, that our stay was lengthened to September 7th, when we left in the morning.* By noon we had cleared the heads of Port Essington, and a course was then shaped for the supposed Sahul Shoal, the northern and central parts of which we passed over without finding any remarkable decrease in the soundings.† The winds were singularly light from the eastward, until we approached Timor, the S.W. end of which we saw in the morning of the 15th,‡ when, after passing through Samow Strait,** we anchored in 13 fathoms off Coepang ”

“ 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. ”

“ October 15.—In the evening the ship was anchored five miles from a small island, bearing S.S.E., which we found to be in lat. 19° 55' S., long. 120° 55' E.; and which, from its lonely situation, was named Solitary Island. Six and nine miles N. by E. from it we had crossed several lines of ripplings and shoal patches of 4 and 5 fathoms. On visiting it next morning (16th) it was found to be of red sandstone formation, thirty feet high, and devoid of vegetation. Although lying a mile from the shore it is connected at low-water by a flat of sand. ”

“ Cape Joubert,‡ distant sixteen miles, was the last projection of any kind we passed.
* From the result of our soundings on the passage to the coast, it would appear that a ship in 60 or 70 fathoms would be about the same number of miles from the land between the lat. of 14 or 15° S.-quality of bottom, a greyish sand, which becomes coarser as the depth increases. † The long.s depend on the meridian of Coepang. which has been considered in 123° 37' 0" E. ‡ In lat. ”