Soon after the ship had come to an anchor, some natives came off in their canoes and paid us a visit, bringing with them a quantity of shellfish (Sanguinolaria rugosa) which they eagerly exchanged for biscuit.  For a few days afterwards we occasionally met them on the beach, but at length they disappeared altogether, in consequence of having been fired at with shot by one of two of the young gentlemen of the Bramble, on a shooting excursion, whom they wished to prevent from approaching too closely a small village, where they had their wives and children.  Immediate steps were taken, in consequence, to prevent the recurrence of such collisions, when thoughtless curiosity on one side is apt to be promptly resented on the other, if numerically superior in force.  I saw nothing in the appearance of these natives to distinguish them from those of Goold Island, and the canoes are the same.  The men had large prominent cicatrices on the shoulders, and across the breast and belly, the septum of the nose was perforated, and none of the teeth had been removed.  I saw no weapons, and some rude armlets were their only ornaments.

THE BARNARD ISLES.

On June 6th we ran to the northward 15 1/2 miles, and anchored at noon under Number 3 of the Barnard Isles, a group consisting of six high rocky wooded isles, the two southernmost of which are separated from the rest by an interval of four miles.  I landed upon the two largest (1 and 3 of the charts) on the first only once.  I there found nothing of much interest, except some very thick beds of conglomerate superimposed upon a compact basaltic-looking rock.  Number 3, on the other hand, consists of mica slate, much contorted, and altered from its usual appearance, and containing lead ore (galena) with several veins of quartz, one of which, about two feet in thickness, traverses the island from side to side.

BOTANY OF THE BARNARD ISLES.

The islands of the North-East coast of Australia hitherto and subsequently visited during the survey, afford all the gradations between the simplest form of a sandbank upon a coral reef scantily covered with grass, a few creeping plants and stunted bushes on one hand—­and on the other a high, rocky, well-wooded island with an undulating succession of hills and valleys.  In those of the latter class, to a certain extent only in the islands of Rockingham Bay, but in a very striking degree in those to the northward, there is so great a similarity in the vegetation, that an illustration of the botany may be taken from one of the Barnard Isles, Number 3—­exhibiting what may be termed an Indo-Australian Flora.