Starvation stared them in the face, when it was discovered that Mount Pitt was honeycombed with mutton-bird burrows.

They were slain in thousands.

"The slaughter and mighty havoc is beyond description," wrote an officer.

"They are very fine eating, exceeding fat and firm, and I think (though no connoisseur) as good as any I ever eat." Many people who are not hunger-driven profess to relish young mutton-bird, whose flesh is like neither fish nor fowl, but an oily blend of both.
On this cruise Flinders came in sight of Cook's Point Hicks; and his reference to it has some interest because Bass had missed it; because Flinders himself did not on any of his other voyages sail close enough inshore on this part of the coast to observe it, and did not mark it upon his charts; and because the more recent substitution of the name Cape Everard for the name given by Cook, makes of some consequence the allusion of this great navigator to a projection which he saw only once.
The Francis on February 4th "was in 38 degrees 16 minutes and (by account) 22 minutes of longitude to the west of Point Hicks.

The schooner was kept more northward in the afternoon; at four o'clock a moderately high sloping hill was visible in the north by west, and at seven a small rocky point on the beach bore north 50 degrees west three or four leagues.