If any judgment could be hazarded of the quality of the country, at the distance the sloop was at, it might be supposed, from the beauty of the lower head-land, to be somewhat above mediocrity.  Extensive tracts of open ground that come down towards the sea in gradual green slopes were varied by clumps of wood and large single trees.

A column of smoke that arose some few miles inland, was the only sign of its being inhabited.

At noon the latitude was 40 degrees 44 minutes 08 seconds, the peak of Cape Barren Island then in sight.  At this time they were two miles to the westward of the small island, which was low and rocky, lying about two miles and a half off a sharp, sandy point, with which it was nearly connected by some lumps of rock that almost closed up the passage.  A long curved line of ripple extended to the northward.

The aspect of the low land here became less pleasing, the mountains approaching nearer to the sea, and the country appearing to be more wooded.  The coast seemed inclined to a more southerly direction, and the western extremity, which bore SW by W, appeared broken, like Islands.  At five in the afternoon they anchored two miles and a half to the westward of the small island, it being calm, and the tide of ebb setting the vessel to the Northward.

They weighed at nine the next morning with an easterly wind, and steered in towards a small break that presented itself in the bottom of an extensive but not deep bay, or rather bight, lying between the two extremes then in view.  The break was not sufficiently distinct to have justified in itself alone a reasonable supposition of an inlet, but that it was corroborated by the direction of the ebb tide, which, while the sloop was at anchor, was observed to come from the SSW or directly out of the bight, running at the rate of two miles and a half per hour.  By noon, it being ascertained that there was not any inlet, they bore away to the Westward along the land.

Their distance from the shore did not exceed a mile and a half.  The back country consisted of high hummocky mountains, whose parallel edges were lying elevated one above another to a considerable distance inland.  The land in front was woody and bushy, of a moderate height, but sandy.

At three in the afternoon they ran through between a sandy point, with shoal water off it, and two islands.  One of these, named Waterhouse Isle, is between two and three miles in length, rather high, but level, and covered with large wood.  The other is small, low, rocky, and almost bare.  The coast now trended to the SSW the land sloping up gradually from the sea to a moderate height, with more open than wooded ground, and but little brush; but the soil appeared sandy, and the grass but thinly grown.  The hummocky mountains still retained their general figure in the more interior parts.

As they proceeded, the shore no longer preserved any regular line of direction, but fell back into sandy bights.  Hauling off for the night, a little to the westward of a small rocky and barren island, lying about four miles from the land, at six o’clock the following morning they came in with it again, near where they had left it the preceding evening, and began their course along the shore, which trended to the SSW in an irregular manner, with a sandy country at its back.