While nearly becalmed, several opportunities were afforded for dredging from the ship, and many new and curious marine animals were procured.
KEPPEL'S ISLE.
Today we had the wind from East-South-East, gradually freshening to a moderate gale with the sea getting up, and in the evening it was judged expedient to bear up and run for an anchorage under the largest Keppel's Isle, where we brought up in five and a half fathoms, sand.

A line of breaking water a quarter of a mile to leeward, was afterwards found to be caused by a dangerous reef not indicated upon the chart, where, instead, an anchorage was marked, a circumstance which might have led to serious results, had we run in during the night.
Keppel's Isle is from ten to twelve miles in circumference--it is distant from the mainland six miles.

That portion of it seen from our anchorage presented rather a pleasant appearance; some fine verdant grassy-looking places were, however, found on closer inspection to be poor stony or sandy ground, thinly covered with tufts of coarse grass.

Behind a long sandy beach abreast of the ship, an extensive hollow apparently running back for two or three miles, flanked by low wooded hills, was found to be a mangrove swamp traversed by several branches of a saltwater creek, by which the flood-tide gains admittance.

Here I found numbers of a singular fish of the genus Chironectes leaping with great activity over the mud among the arched roots of the mangroves, among which small crabs (Ocypoda and Macrophthalmus) were making for their burrows in all directions.
Fresh water appeared scarce--I came upon one small well, and beside it a large shell for the purpose of drinking from.