Transcription

New Wales or E.t Coast of New Holland
Aug 1770
[margin] take possession of the country [/margin]
going with the ship & therefore may land no more upon this eastern coast of New Holland & on the western side I can make no new discovery the honour of which belongs to the Dutch navigator but the eastern coast from the Lat. of 98°S.o down to this place I am confident was never seen or visited by any European before us & not withstanding I had in the name of his Maj.y. taken possession of several places upon this coast I now once more hoisted English colours & in the name of His Maj.y King George the Third took possession of the whole eastern coast from the above Lat.de to this place by the name of New Wales together with all the bays harbours rivers & islands situated upon the same coast after which we fire'd 3 volleys of small arms which we answer'd by the like number from the ship. this done we set out for the ship but were sometime in getting onboard on accou.t of a very rapid ebb tide which set NE out of the passage. ever since we came in among the shoals this last time we have found a mod.te tide the flood setting to the NE & ebb to the SE. at this place it is high water at the fall & change of the Moon about 1 or 2 o'clock & riseth & falls upon a perpendicular about 10 or 12 feet. We saw upon all the adjacent lands & islands a great number of smokes a certain sign that they are inhabited & we have daily seen smokes on every part of the coast we have lately been upon. Between 7 & o'clock am, we saw several naked people all or most of them women down upon the beach picking up shells & they had not a single rag of a kind of clothing upon them & both these & those we saw yesterday were in every respect the same sort of people we have seen everywhere upon the coast, 2 or 3 of the men we saw yesterday had on pretty large breast plates which we supposed were made of pearl oyster shells, this was a thing as well as the bow & arrow we had not seen before.
At low water which hapned about 10 o'clock we got under sail & stood to the SW with a light breeze at East which afterward veer'd to the NbE having the pinnance ahead depth of water from 6 to 10 fa.om. except in one place where we passed over a bank of 5 fa.om at Noon Possession Island at the SE entrance of the passage bore N.o 53°E dist, 4 leagues the western extremes of the main
[margin] C. Cornwall[/margin]
land in sight bore So43 W. dist.e 4 or 5 Leag.s being all exceeding low. The SW point of the largest island on the NW side of the passage bore N71°W distant 8 miles this point I named Cape Cornwall at Latitude 10:43 So. Longitude 218°-59' W/& some low islands laying about the middle of the passage which I called Wallice's Isles bore WbS1/2So distance about 2 leagues, our Latitude by observation was 10°46So.
Thursday [?] In the pm had little wind & variable with which & the ride of flood we

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