1803.
March.
Saturday 12.
New Year's Isle is a bed of sand mixed with broken coral, thrown up on a coral reef. It is four or five miles in circumference, and the higher parts are thickly covered with shrubs and brush wood; but much of it is over-run with mangroves, and laid under water by the tide. Fresh prints of feet on the sand showed that the natives had either visited it very lately, or were then upon the island; turtle also had been there, but their traces were of an old date. The reef extends about a mile off, all round; we had 22 fathoms very near the outer edge, and saw no other danger. Broken land was perceived to the southward, probably the inner isles marked by lieutenant MᶜCluer; and six or seven leagues to the S.W. was a part of the main, somewhat higher but equally sandy, which we traced above half a degree to the westward. I made the latitude of the island to be 10° 55′ south, and longitude by time keeper corrected 133° 4′ east; being 3′ more south and 8′ less east than Mr. MᶜCluer's position. The variation of the compass, from azimuths taken twenty leagues to the east of New Year's Isle, was 1° 55′ east, with the ship's head W.N.W.; and at thirteen leagues on the west side, 1° 20′ with the head N.W.; these being corrected to the meridian, will be 0° 23′ and 0° 12′ east. The tide ran strong to the N.W. whilst it was ebbing by the shore, so that the flood would seem to come from the westward; whereas in the neighbourhood of Cape Arnhem the flood came mostly from the opposite direction: whether this change were a general one, or arose from some opening to the S.E. of New Year's Isle, our knowledge of the coast was too imperfect to determine.
We had continued to have soundings, generally on a muddy bottom, from the time of quitting Wessel's Islands; nor did they vary much, being rarely less than 25, and never more than 35 fathoms. Sunday 13.On the 13th at noon we had 34 fathoms, being then in 10° 41′ south and 132° 40′ east, and the coast still in sight to the southward. The winds then hung in the southern quarter, being sometimes S.W., and at others S.E., but always light; and I steered