Flinders.
1798.
gave 40° 28′ for the latitude of Hamilton's Road. The longitude is 19′ 20″ west of Cape Barren; and therefore should be 148° 6′ east of Greenwich. It is high water in the road, according to Mr. Hamilton's report, half an hour before the moon passes over the meridian; but from what I observed, without paying particular attention to it, the tide did not appear to flow so late by an hour: the medium rise was about seven feet, as at Port Jackson.
Well tasted fresh water is collected, at certain seasons, in small pools near the east end of Preservation Island; but that which drains from the rocks was first used by the Sydney-Cove's crew, until several of them died. Small runs or pools of water are to be found almost every where under the high parts of Cape-Barren Island, and it is probable there may be some upon Clarke's Island; but at the Passage Isles we found it difficult to obtain wherewithal to satisfy our thirst.
The stone of which the southern, and probably the whole of Furneaux's Islands are composed, is mostly a whitish granite, but sometimes inclining to red; and is full of small, black specks. Quartz seems to have a more than usual share in its composition, and we occasionally found crystals of that substance upon the shores. The black specks were thought to be grains of tin, and to have communicated a deleterious quality to the water used by the shipwrecked people. The exceptions to the general prevalence of granite were few: they consisted of some black, and some grey slate, in thin strata, placed nearly perpendicular to the horizon; but even here, the granite had pervaded the fissures of the strata; and, in two instances, a substance which, from its appearance, I supposed to be a toad stone, had insinuated itself.
Some of the trees on Preservation Island had partly undergone a peculiar transformation. The largest of them were not thicker than a man's leg, and the whole were decayed; but whilst the upper branches continued to be of wood, the roots at the surface, and the trunks up to a certain height, were of a stony substance resembling