Our first day out was choppy and rough, but a heavy shower smoothed out the sea like oil, and the next day saw us inside the Barrier Reef, in the Coral Sea that stretches away to the extreme north coast. Captain Cook had made the same voyage that we were making in the summer of 1770 in a boat of 368 tons, and we thought our boat small! He noted and named every headland and bay along "this dangerous coast, where the sea in all parts conceals shoals that suddenly project from the shore, and rocks that rise abruptly like a pyramid from the bottom, for more than 1300 miles." Even now, when every inch of the course has been charted, the voyage is dangerous for the same reason, the low flat islands are nearly indiscernible at night. The mountainous coast is almost uninhabited, except by natives, unfriendly now as then; and is almost entirely unlighted, as hitherto the Government has not been able to incur the expense of erecting and maintaining lighthouses, except in the neighbourhood of the few existing townships. No ship's library on this course should be without a copy of "Captain Cook's Voyages," or, at any rate, no traveller should fail to provide himself with one, as the record of this early navigator in these seas adds immensely to the interest of the journey to-day.
