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Updated: June 3, 2025
It may here be remarked that the birds met with on Houtman's Abrolhos, with the exception of one, resembling in shape and colour a small quail,* were known and common on the mainland.
The number of leagues mentioned in the text would lead us to the Bay of Santos on the coast of Brazil, in latitude twenty-four degrees S. but in the text this first attempt to colonize Brazil is said to have been in latitude eighteen degrees S. near which the harbour now named Abrolhos is situated.
The temperature of Houtman's Abrolhos is rendered equable by the fact that they lie at the limit of the land breezes; during the month we were there the thermometer averaged 71 degrees. Our protracted stay enabled us to get a tolerable series of tidal observations, which present some singular results. The time of high-water at the full and change was six o'clock when the tide rose 30 inches.
I have described a most singular natural bar of hard sandstone, which protects the harbour, in the 19th volume 1841 page 258 of the "London and Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine." ABROLHOS ISLETS, Latitude 18 degrees S. off the coast of Brazil. Although not strictly in place, I do not know where I can more conveniently describe this little group of small islands.
Bynoe, "of the kangaroo tribe, to any extent, occurred at the Abrolhos; there I had an extensive field for ascertaining the exact state of the uteri of the wallaby of those islands. I opened between two and three hundred, and never found even the rudiments of an embryo; but in the pouch I have seen the young adhering to the nipple from the weight of half a dram to eight ounces and upwards.
Since making my arrangements at the Moro, where I left all the squadron except this ship and the Maria de Gloria, I have been constantly off the port of Bahia, but could see nothing of the enemy's squadron, till the 20th, when I learned from an English vessel that they had been as far down as the Abrolhos shoals, for what purpose I know not.
I was surprised to find this fort so much out of repair; the only guns fit to be fired out of were two brass six-pounders, the carriages indeed of which were not trustworthy. On these guns I noticed the same mark as on that we found at Houtman's Abrolhos, namely, two sides of a triangle bisecting two small circles.
Further in the offing, for a space of 1,300 miles along the coast, from the Abrolhos Islands to Maranham, the bottom in many places is composed of "tuf blanc, mele ou forme de madrepores broyes." Where the waves act with unequal force on the two sides of an atoll, the islets appear to be first formed, and are generally of greater continuity on the more exposed shore.
The Colonial schooner Champion, in beating to the southward, has passed over and near its assigned position, and I think we may fairly infer that there is no such reef as the Turtle Dove, and that probably it originated from the south end of the Abrolhos reef, ten miles North-North-West of it, being seen.
The Abrolhos extend in a North-North-West direction forty-eight miles, diminishing in breadth towards the north; the greatest width of Easter and Pelsart Groups being twelve miles in a West-South-West direction. In Easter Group the outer reefs are most distant from the islands, being there four miles from the nearest, which is Rat Island.
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