The bay was named Vansittart after the late Chancellor of the Exchequer.

October 8.

At daylight (8th) we weighed and stood out to the North-West between Troughton Island and Cape Bougainville.  Round the latter projection the land trends so deeply in to the southward that it was lost to view; but two flat-topped islands were seen in the South-South-West, which afterwards proved to be some of Captain Baudin’s Institute Isles; we were now obliged to steer down the western side of the cape, for our further progress to the westward was stopped by a considerable reef extending north and south parallel with the land of Cape Bougainville.  During the afternoon we had the wind and tide against us so that we made no progress.  Some bights in the coast were approached with the intention of anchoring in them but the water was so deep and the ground so unfavourable for it that the stream anchor was eventually dropped in the offing in twenty-two fathoms:  where during the night the tide set with unusual velocity and ran at the rate of one knot and three-quarters per hour.

October 9.

In the morning a view from the masthead enabled me to see a confused mass of rocks and islets in the South-West.  At eight o’clock the flood tide commenced and the anchor being weighed, we steered towards the bottom of the gulf; on our way to which the positions of several small rocks and islets, which form a part of this archipelago, were fixed.  At noon our latitude was 14 degrees 7 minutes 15 seconds, when the hill, which we ascended over Encounter Cove in Vansittart Bay, was seen bearing South 88 1/2 degrees East.  The land to the southward was still far distant but with a fresh sea breeze we made rapid progress towards it and by four o’clock entered an extensive port at the bottom of the gulf and anchored in a bay on its western shore, land-locked, in four fathoms and three-quarters, mud.  In finding this anchorage we considered ourselves fortunate for the freshness of the breeze in so dangerous a situation made me feel uneasy for our only anchor, which we must have dropped at night, however exposed our situation might have been:  by midnight the breeze fell and we had a dead calm.

October 10.

The next day we landed on the west head of the bay, Crystal Head, where the meridional altitude of the sun was observed and sights for the chronometers taken; in the evening we ascended its summit and by a bearing of the land of Cape Bougainville the survey was connected with Vansittart Bay.

In the morning a young kangaroo was started by Mr. Cunningham but made its escape; the traces of these animals were very numerous on the sides of the hills; several birds new to us were seen, and we also found about the bushes the tail-feathers of the Cuculus phasianus (Index Orn.  Sup. page 30).  The summit of Crystal Head is of flat tabular form; and the sides, which are both steep and rugged, are covered with stunted trees and high grass, now quite dry:  the geology of this part is principally of siliceous sandstone; and on the beach we found large detached water-worn masses of the same rock, incrusted with quartz and epidote in a crystallized state.