us that the Amphinome Shoals were close at hand; on patches one and two
miles west and south of the ship there was only six and nine feet.

VISIT THE SHORE.

October 17.

In the morning another party visited the shore, landing under a low
sandhill, sixty feet high, bearing South by East six miles, called Mount
Blaze, in latitude 20 degrees 0 minutes South and longitude 119 degrees
40 minutes East. This was found to stand on a projection, with two small
rocky islets on either side. Eastward from it cliffy points separating
shoal mangrove bays, formed the character of the coast; whilst in the
opposite direction extended a bay, fifteen miles wide, over the western
point of which we recognised the sandhills seen on our visit to this part
in July, 1840; the shores of this great bay were fronted for some
distance by shoal water.

Behind Mount Blaze the country was swampy, with mangroves, for a few
miles; it then gradually rose, and on the bearing of South 7 degrees
East, distant nearly fifteen miles, were seen conical-sided flat-topped
hills about two hundred feet high. This was the first remarkable
elevation in the country we had seen during the two hundred miles of the
coastline traced by the Beagle; it appears to be the North-East
termination of the high land seen southward from the Turtle Isles.

Some small burrowing animal had so excavated the ground in the vicinity
of Mount Blaze, that at each step we sunk in knee-deep; a few quails were
shot, but no varieties of birds were seen beyond what had been already
observed at the other points of the coast visited.