Sunday 25 September 1836

25 September-Sunday. Light breezes and rainy. At nine I left the ship to examine what appeared to us a considerable inlet; the water shoaled very gradually, and about half a mile from our supposed inlet it became very shallow, and soon after the boat grounded. Seeing this could not be Jones’s harbour, which I was intensely anxious about, I resolved on returning to the brig and running higher up the Gulf, but on getting on board, Mr Hill, second mate, told me he had seen from the masthead a river to the southward of considerable breadth. I therefore again left the ship (which was got under way in the meantime, and anchored off the mouth of the river) to explore, but after sailing some distance in the hatch-boat, and walking about three miles on the beach without success, we a second time returned to the ship. About four p.m. the mouth of the river was distinctly seen from the brig; I had missed it and gone to the southward of it, not seeing it from the boat. Mr Field had, during my absence, gone in the jolly-boat, and sounded and reported a river of considerable extent; I therefore remained in our present anchorage for the purpose of having the whole of the next day to examine it.