except a few patches of wood, to be a barren rock, the haunt of birds, which had frequented it in such numbers as to make the surface almost uniformly white with their dung:  Of these birds the greater part seemed to be boobies, and I therefore called the place Booby Island.  After a short stay, we returned to the ship, and in the mean time the wind had got to the S.W.; it was but a gentle breeze, yet it was accompanied by a swell from the same quarter, which, with other circumstances, confirmed my opinion that we were got to the westward of Carpentaria, or the northern extremity of New Holland, and had now an open sea to the westward, which gave me great satisfaction, not only because the dangers and fatigues of the voyage were drawing to an end, but because it would no longer be a doubt whether New Holland and New Guinea were two separate islands, or different parts of the same.[86]

[Footnote 86:  Here it may be proper to introduce a paragraph from M. Peron’s Historical Relation of a Voyage of Discovery to the Southern Islands, as presented to the Imperial Institute in June 1806.  It will show his conception of the difficulties attendant on navigating these parts:  “In fact, it is not in voyages on the high seas, however long they may be, that adverse circumstances or shipwrecks are so much to be dreaded; those, on the contrary, along unknown shores and barbarous coasts, at every instant present new difficulties to encounter, with perpetual dangers.  Those difficulties and dangers, the woeful appendage of all expeditions begun for the purposes of geographic detail, were of more imminent character from the nature of the coasts we had to explore; for no country has hitherto been discovered more difficult to reconnoitre than New Holland, and all the voyages of any extent made for the purpose in this point, have been marked either by reverses or infructuous attempts.  For example, Paliser on the western coast was one of the first victims of these shores; Vlaming speaks of wrecks by which Rottnest island was covered when he landed there in 1697; and we ourselves observed others of much more recent date.  Captain Dampier, notwithstanding his intrepidity and experience, could not preserve his vessel from grounding when on the northwest coast of this continent, a coast already famous for the shipwreck of Vianin; on the east, Bougainville, menaced with destruction, was constrained to precipitate flight; Cook escaped by a kind of miracle, the rock which pierced his ship remaining in the breach it made, and alone preventing it from sinking; on the south-west, Vancouver and D’Entrecasteaux were not more fortunate in their several plans of completing its geography, and the French admiral nearly lost both his ships.  Towards the south, but a few years have elapsed since the discovery of Bass’s Straits, and already the major part of the islands of this strait is strewed with the wrecks of ships; very recently, and almost before our face, I may say, the French ship Enterprize