The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 Part 38

Like the visitors who came off to Flinders, they showed a great liking for port wine. Upon mentioning the natives of the coast, and showing a stone-headed spear, they evinced great disgust. They called them "Marega," being the Malay definition of that portion of the coast.

King, during his survey of Van Dieman's Gulf, found and named the two Alligator Rivers, afterwards traversed by Leichhardt on his trip to Port Essington. From the Gulf they sailed to Melville Island, which was named after the First Lord of the Admiralty. He says:--

"We pa.s.sed round Cape Van Dieman and anch.o.r.ed in the mouth of a very considerable river-like opening, the size of which inspired us with the flattering hope of having made an important discovery, for as yet we had no idea of the insularity of Melville Island."

Here once more they had trouble with the natives, whose intercourse with the Malays had made them adroit and treacherous thieves.

Whilst on sh.o.r.e taking some bearings, the party was suddenly surprised, and, beating a hasty retreat, the theodolite stand and Cunningham's insect net were left behind, and immediately appropriated by the natives.

This stand they obstinately refused to deliver or exchange, although offered tomahawks and other tempting presents. Once, after a long discussion, they brought it down to the beach and minutely examined it, but the bra.s.s mountings took their fancy too much to allow them to part with it, and King could not take it by force without bloodshed. On the 19th May, Apsley Strait was discovered, and the second island received the name of Bathurst.

King next surveyed and named the Vernon Islands, and Clarence Strait.

"The time had now arrived for our leaving the coast; our provisions were drawing to an end, and we had only a sufficiency of bread to carry us back to Port Jackson; although we had been all the voyage upon a reduced allowance; our water had also failed, and several casks which we had calculated upon being full were found to be so bad that the water was perfectly useless; these casks were made in Sydney, and proved-like our bread casks-to have been made from the staves of salt provision casks: besides this defalcation, several puncheons were found empty, and it was, therefore, doubly necessary that we should resort to Timor without any more delay."

While at Timor, "Dramah," the princ.i.p.al rajah of the Malay fis.h.i.+ng fleet, gave King the following information respecting the coast of New Holland, which he had frequently visited in command of the fleet that visits its sh.o.r.es yearly for trepang:--

"The coast is called by them 'Marega,' and has been known to them for many years. A fleet, to the number of two hundred proas, annually (this number seems exaggerated), leave Maca.s.sar for this fishery; it sails in January, during the westerly monsoons, and coasts from island to island until it reaches the north-east of Timor, where it steers S.E. and S.S.E., which courses carry them to the coast of New Holland; the body of the fleet then steers eastward, leaving here and there a division of fifteen or sixteen proas, under the command of an inferior rajah who leads the fleet, and is always implicitly obeyed. His proa is the only vessel provided with a compa.s.s; it also has one or two swivel or small guns, and is perhaps armed with musquets. Their provisions chiefly consist of rice and cocoa-nuts, and their water--which during the westerly monsoon is easily replenished on all parts of the coast--is carried in joints of bamboo. Besides trepang, they trade in sharks' fins and birds'

nests."

Their method of curing is thus described by Flinders:--

"They get the trepang by diving in from three to eight fathoms of water, and where it is abundant a man will bring up eight or ten at a time. The mode of preserving it is thus--the animal is split down on one side, boiled and pressed with a weight of stones, then stretched open by slips of bamboo, dried in the sun and afterwards in smoke, when it is fit to put away in bags, but requires frequent exposure to the sun. There are two kinds of trepang, the black and the white or grey slug."

From Dramah's information, it would seem a perpetual warfare raged between the natives and Malays, which was unfortunate for King, as it would make it a very difficult matter to establish friendly communication with people who could not be expected to distinguish between the English and Malays. After a short stay in Timor, he sailed for Sydney by way of the west coast, and anch.o.r.ed in Port Jackson on the 29th of July, 1818.

The early loss of the anchors had not allowed King so much opportunity of detailed examination as would otherwise have been the case; but much of the work that he had been sent to do had been carried out; the examinations of the opening behind Rosemary Island, and of Van Dieman's Gulf, beside the survey of the numerous smaller openings and islands.

"Mr. Cunningham made a very valuable and extensive collection of dried plants and seeds; but, from the small size of our vessel and the constant occupation of myself and the two mids.h.i.+pmen, who accompanied me, we had neither s.p.a.ce nor time to form any other collection of natural history than a few insects, and some specimens of the geology of those parts where we landed!"

The equipment of the vessel for the second voyage, and the construction of charts of the first, occupied Captain King until December, when he left Port Jackson to survey the entrance of Macquarie Harbour, which had lately been discovered, on the western coast of Van Dieman's Land, and in February, 18ig, he returned to Sydney.

King now started to return to the scene of his labours, this time intending to make his way along the east coast and through Torres Straits. With him went Surveyor-General Oxley, in the colonial brig, LADY NELSON, to examine Port Macquarie, in New South Wales, where, it will be remembered, Oxley reached the coast after his descent of the Main Range.

On the 8th of May, 1819, the two vessels left Port Jackson, and arrived at their destination in two days. Here, after spending a short time in the necessary examination, they parted company, the LADY NELSON returning to Sydney with the Surveyor-General, and the MERMAID continuing her voyage.

The east coast having been twice surveyed by Cook and Flinders, there was little left beyond minor details for King to complete. An opening which had escaped Captain Flinders was examined, finding good, well sheltered anchorage within. They named it Rodd's Bay. Amongst other places they landed at, was Cleveland Bay.

"Near the extremity of Cape Cleveland some bamboo was picked no, and also a fresh green cocoa-nut that appeared to have been hastily tapped for milk. Heaps of pumice stone was noticed upon this beach; not any of this production had been met with floating. Hitherto no cocoa-nuts have been found on this continent, although so great a portion of it is within the tropic, and its north-east coast, so near to islands on which this fruit is abundant. Captain Cook imagined that the husk of one, which his second Lieutenant, Mr. Gore, picked up at the Endeavour River, and which was covered with barnacles, came from the Terra del Espiritu Santo of Quiros; but from the prevailing winds it would appear more likely to have been drifted from New Caledonia, which island was at that time unknown to him; the fresh appearance of the cocoa-nut seen by us renders, however, even this conclusion doubtful; Captain Flinders also found one as far to the south as Shoal Water Bay.

"In the gullies, Mr. Cunningham reaped an excellent harvest both of seeds and plants. Here as well as at every other place that we had landed upon within the tropic, the air is crowded with a species of b.u.t.terfly, a great many of which were taken. It is doubtless the same species as that which Captain Cook remarks are so plentiful in Thirsty Sound. He says, 'We found also an incredible number of b.u.t.terflies, so that for the s.p.a.ce of three or four acres the air was so crowded with them, that millions were to be seen in every direction, at the same time that every branch and twig were covered with others that were not upon the wing.' The numbers seen by us were indeed incredible; the stem of every gra.s.s tree, which plant grows abundantly upon the hills, was covered with them, and on their taking wino, the air appeared, as it were, in perfect motion."

King landed at the Endeavour River to build a boat that he had on board in frame--in all probability the very same spot that Captain Cook landed upon forty-nine years before. He took the precaution to burn the gra.s.s that the natives should not attempt the same trick upon him that they had played on Cook. During the time the boat was building the inevitable thieving of the natives took place, and the usual tactics of firing over their heads had to be resorted to.

"On the 10th of July our boat was launched and preparations were made for leaving the place which had afforded us so good an opportunity of repairing our defects.

"The basis of the country in the vicinity of this river is evidently granitic; and from the abrupt and primitive appearance of the land about Cape Tribulation, and to the north of Weary Bay, there is every reason to suppose that granite is also the principle feature of those mountains, but the rocks that lie loosely scattered about the beaches and surface of the bills on the south side of the entrance, are of quartzoze substance; and this, likewise, is the character of the hills at the east end of the northern beach. Where the rocks are coated with a quartzoze crust, that, in its crumbled state, forms a very productive soil. The hills on the south side of the port recede from the banks of the river, and form an amphitheatre of low gra.s.sy land, and some tolerable soil, upon the surface of which, in many parts, we found large blocks of granite heaped one upon another. Near the tent we found coal, but the presence of this mineral in a primitive country, at an immense distance from any part where a coal formation is known to exist, would puzzle the geologist were I not to explain all I know upon the subject.

"Upon referring to the late Sir Joseph Banks' copy of the ENDEAVOUR log, I found the following remark:--'June 21st and 22nd, 1770--Employed getting our coals on sh.o.r.e.' There remains no doubt that it is a relic of that navigator's voyage, which must have been lying undisturbed for nearly half a century."

Leaving the Endeavour, the next object of interest they fell in with was the wreck of a vessel, which, on examination, proved to be the FREDERICK, but no signs of the fate of her crew were to be seen. They next had a narrow escape of being wrecked themselves on a bank at the mouth of a river running into Newcastle Bay, which King christened Escape River, and which was afterwards destined to come into fatal prominence as the scene of Kennedy's death.

Off Good Island, in Torres Straits, the arm of their anchor broke.

"A remarkable coincidence of our two losses upon the two voyages has now occurred. Last year, at the North-West Cape, we lost two anchors just as we were commencing the survey; and now, on rounding the North-East Cape, to commence our examination of the north coast, we have encountered a similar loss; leaving us, in both instances, only one bower anchor to carry on the survey."

Eleven weeks now since they had left Port Jackson, during that time King had laid down the different projections of the coast, and the track within the Barrier Reefs and between the Percy Islands and Cape York; surveyed Port Macquarie, examined Rodd's Bay, and constructed the boat at the Endeavour River.

Frequent rain between Cape Grafton and Torres Straits not only increased the danger of navigation, but the continued dampness of the small cabins, and--from the small size of the vessel--no stove to dry them, caused much sickness; but on the voyage from the straits to the western head of the Gulf of Carpentaria--Cape Arnhem--they found drier air, and finer weather, which soon restored the invalids to perfect health.

King sailed across the Gulf, and sighted the land again at Cape Wessel, and on the 30th July anch.o.r.ed off the "COCODRILES' EYLANDTS" of the old charts. Here King discovered a river which he named the Liverpool, and is doubtless the Spult of the Dutch navigators. Up this river, the commander, accompanied by Bedwell and Cunningham, made a long excursion, but the country was too flat for him to gain much information.

At Goulburn Island, where they landed at their old watering place, they were again attacked by their friends, the natives, as of old. There is no doubt that the bad habits of these blacks had been induced by their long intercourse with the Malays.

Leaving Goulburn Island they pa.s.sed round Cape Van Dieman, steering so as to see several parts of the coast of Melville Island, in order to check the last year's survey. After rounding the cape they kept a course down the western side of Bathurst Island. On the 27th they made land on the south side of Clarence Strait, in the vicinity of the Vernon Islands.

"This was the last land seen by us on leaving the coast in May, 1818."

Captain King's next important discovery was the now well-known Cambridge Gulf. On Adolphus Island, in the Gulf, he buried one of his seamen, named William Nicholls, and in memorial, the north-west point of the island was named after him. From this point King was very anxious to examine the coast most carefully, as the French s.h.i.+ps, under M. Baudin, had seen but very little of it; but he had been unable to find fresh water in Cambridge Gulf, and his stock was running low. They were very weak handed, three men, besides Mr. Bedwell, being ill.

"The greater part of the crew were affected with ophthalmia, probably caused by the excessive glare and reflection of the sun's rays from the gla.s.sy surface of the sea."

Under these unfavourable circ.u.mstances they were obliged to make for Coepang. King says:--

"In the s.p.a.ce between Cape Bougainville and Cape Voltaire, which was named Admiralty Gulf, we have given positions to at least forty islands or islets. Having now emerged from the archipelago of islands which front this part of the north-west coast, we seized the opportunity of taking leave of it for the present, and directed our course for Timor."

Here he heard that some of the crew of the wrecked vessel, the FREDERICK, that they had seen on the east coast, had arrived, but the greater number of the crew in the long boat had not been heard of.