Amateur-built as she was, and very small for her work in these seas, she was proving a useful boat, and one can enjoy the sailors' pride in a snug craft in Flinders' remark concerning her, that "upon the whole she performed wonderfully; seas that were apparently determined to swallow her up she rode over with all the ease and majesty of an old experienced petrel." The wild and desolate aspect of the west coast, as seen from the ocean, seems to have struck Flinders with a feeling of dread.

He so rarely allows any emotion to appear in his writing that the sentences in his diary wherein he refers to the appearance of the De Witt range are striking evidence of his revulsion.

"The mountains which presented themselves to our view in this situation, both close to the shore and inland, were amongst the most stupendous works of nature I ever beheld, and it seemed to me are the most dismal and barren that can be imagined.
The eye ranges over these peaks, and curiously formed lumps of adamantine rock, with astonishment and horror." He acknowledged that he clapped on all sail to get past this forbidding coast.

The passage is singular.
Flinders was a fenland-bred man, and, passing from the low levels of eastern England to a life at sea in early youth, had had no experience of mountainous country.

He had not even seen the mountains at the back of Sydney, except in the blue distance.