J'ignore de quelle matiere, elle m'a paru etre blanche." Boug.Chap.v.p.

264.] Lieutenant Shortland now congratulated himself on having cleared this large tract of land, which he had the greatest reason to suppose united the whole way from the place at which he first fell in with it; as in sailing at a very moderate distance from the coast, he had made every effort in his power to find a passage to the northward.

A place called by one of the French navigators, Port Surville, is probably a part of it, as well as Choiseul Bay, but the points seen and described by the French discoverers are very few; and for the knowledge of the form and bearings of the rest of the coast, throughout the whole extent of near three degrees of latitude, and full five of longitude, we are indebted entirely to the researches of our own countryman, as we are for the beautiful delineation of the whole coast, to the care and ingenuity of his son, Mr.
John George Shortland.

The only places in which Lieutenant Shortland suspected there might possibly be a passage which had escaped his observation, was between Cape Phillip and Cape Henslow, and again between the capes Marsh and Pitt.

The ascertaining of these matters he leaves to other navigators, at the same time recommending the route he took as the safest and most expeditious passage within his knowledge from Port Jackson to China; Middleton Shoal, on the coast of New South Wales, being the only place of danger he had hitherto discovered.