A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 14 eBook

Robert Kerr (writer)
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 822 pages of information about A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 14.

A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 14 eBook

Robert Kerr (writer)
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 822 pages of information about A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 14.
Keep the isle close aboard, and you will not only avoid the rock, but keep in anchoring-ground.  The next place, on this side, is Cascade Cove, where there is room for a fleet of ships, and also a passage in on either side of the isle, which lies in the entrance, taking care to avoid a sunken rock which lies near the south-east shore, a little above the isle.  This rock, as well as the one in Pickersgill Harbour, may be seen at half-ebb It must be needless to enumerate all the anchoring-places in this capacious bay.

The north entrance lies in the latitude of 45 deg. 38’ S., and five leagues to the north of Five Fingers Point.  To make this entrance plain, it will be necessary to approach the shore within a few miles, as all the land within and on each side is of considerable height.  Its situation may, however, be known at a greater distance, as it lies under the first craggy mountains which rise to the north of the land of Five Fingers Point.  The southernmost of these mountains is remarkable, having at its summit two small hillocks.  When this mountain bears S.S.E. you will be before the entrance, on the south side of which are several isles.  The westernmost and outermost is the most considerable, both for height and circuit, and this I have called Break sea Isle, because it effectually covers this entrance from the violence of the southwest swell, which the other entrance is so much exposed to.  In sailing in you leave this isle as well as all the others to the south.  The best anchorage is in the first or north arm, which is on the larboard hand going in, either in one of the coves, or behind the isles that lie under the south-east shore.

The country is exceedingly mountainous, not only about Dusky Bay, but through all the southern part of this western coast of Tavai Poenammoo.  A prospect more rude and craggy is rarely to be met with, for inland appears nothing but the summits of mountains of a stupendous height, and consisting of rocks that are totally barren and naked, except where they are covered with snow.  But the land bordering on the sea-coast, and all the islands, are thickly clothed with wood, almost down to the water’s edge.  The trees are of various kinds, such as are common to other parts of this country, and are fit for the shipwright, house-carpenter, cabinet-maker, and many other uses.  Except in the river Thames, I have not seen finer timber in all New Zealand; both here and in that river, the most considerable for size is the Spruce-tree, as we called it, from the similarity of its foliage to the American spruce, though the wood is more ponderous, and bears a greater resemblance to the pitch-pine.  Many of these trees are from six to eight and ten feet in girt, and from sixty to eighty or one hundred feet in length, large enough to make a main-mast for a fifty-gun ship.

Here are, as well as in all other parts of New Zealand, a great number of aromatic trees and shrubs, most of the myrtle kind; but amidst all this variety, we met with none which bore fruit fit to eat.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 14 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.