An extensive coral flat fronts this part of Rottee, connecting it with
the small islands lying off it.

We got from the natives some shells of a kind of small green mussel of a
very peculiar shape. The old men from whom I got them was making a meal
from some rare shell-fish. He did not understand the value of money; and,
strange to say, not a word of the Malay language. The same was the case
with all his companions. At the part of Samow I visited the people all
understood it, which is very remarkable, as only a narrow strait
separates the islands. In this state of ignorance they may perhaps be
purposely kept.

I here recognised several Australian shrubs and palms. The rock of which
this port of Rottee is formed appeared of a madreporic nature, scattered
about in huge blocks. At a little distance from the water it formed low
broken cliffs from twenty to thirty feet in length; these were everywhere
undermined by the sea, from which the land here was evidently emerging. I
noticed several deserted huts and broken walls or fences, which bore the
appearance of having had much labour bestowed on them at some time or
other. They added much to the lonely appearance of the place, for there
is nothing that imparts so great an air of desolation to a scene as the
signs that it has once been inhabited by man. Tracts which have never
before been trodden by human foot may be gazed on with pleasurable
emotions; but there are always melancholy associations connected with a
spot which our fellow-creatures have once inhabited and abandoned.

The natives we saw belonged to the southern side of Tykale Inlet. They
were occupied in looking after some weirs, from the size and number of
which it would appear that they chiefly live on fish.