The Shore Was Generally Bold All Along.

We had met with no shoal at sea since the Abrohlo shoal, when we first fell on the New Holland coast in the latitude of 28 degrees, till yesterday in the afternoon and this night.

This morning also, when we expected by the draught we had with us to have been eleven leagues off shore, we were but four, so that either our draughts were faulty, which yet hitherto and afterwards we found true enough as to the lying of the coast, or else here was a tide unknown to us that deceived us, though we had found very little of any tide on this coast hitherto; as to our winds in the coasting thus far, as we had been within the verge of the general trade (though interrupted by the storm I mentioned), from the latitude of 28 degrees, when we first fell in with the coast, and by that time we were in the latitude of 25 degrees, we had usually the regular trade wind (which is here south-south-east) when we were at any distance from shore; but we had often sea and land breezes, especially when near shore and when in Shark's Bay, and had a particular north-west wind or storm that set us in thither. On this 18th of August we coasted with a brisk gale of the true trade wind at south-south-east, very fair and clear weather; but hauling off in the evening to sea, were next morning out of sight of land, and the land now trending away north-easterly, and we being to the northward of it, and the wind also shrinking from the south-south-east to the east-south-east (that is, from the true trade wind to the sea breeze, as the land now lay), we could not get in with the land again yet awhile so as to see it, though we trimmed sharp and kept close on a wind.

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