The place of Captain Cook's landing is marked by a low brownish green mound jutting out from the coast, which along here has a most inhospitable air, the coastal ranges coming down to the water's edge. The days passed into weeks before the damage could be sufficiently repaired to set sail again. As we passed near inshore these same coastal ranges were deeply purple, with clouds rolling down their sides. There was no sign of life, not even the smoke of a native fire, the scene had great breadth and solemnity.
It was on the same day that we too saw the Barrier Reef, at first looking like a long sandy bar. Presently the coral itself showed with some pelicans on it. Here, too, were the blue lagoons of fiction, small coral islands, with little sandy coves, and pelicans, the only inhabitants, walking under the trees. The warm water of the sea was full of life. Yellow-banded snakes swam by, from two to four feet long. We counted twenty of them in one day. Dampier, exploring the west coast of Australia in 1699, notes these curious water snakes, which are said to be very poisonous. He was sailing out of Shark's Bay when he observed some "serpents swimming about in the sea, of a yellow colour spotted with dark brown spots. They were each about four feet long, and about the bigness of a man's wrist." On several
