By the time the steamer had reached Cook's Head—a solitary rock of eccentric form, which protrudes out of the yellow sandy beach near the outflow of the Toko mairiro river—the South Australian was clearly visible, hard and fast, little more than a quarter of a mile from the shore, with her head to sea-ward, and two of her masts only standing—flic mizen and the fore. Less'than two hours' slow steaming—from 7.38 to 9.ls—brought the Geelong within a few hundred yards of her, and in sufficiently safe soundings— five and six fathoms—-fihe anchor was dropped. The shore throughout the in tervening distance is either sandy beach or low sandstone-bluff, and in a com paratively safe landing-place, to the north ward of one of those bluffs, about four miles distance from the steamer, -were seen two of her boats, beached and hauled above high water mark. Immediately opposite to where the vessel lies is a broad flat or terrace of flax-land, several miles in breadth, between the foot of the ranges and the sea, and extending in crescent form, from Mr Mansford's farm of Coombe Hay, on the northward, to Coal Foint on the southward—a distance of ten or fifteen miles. The cliffs immediately opposite the vessel are from fifty to sixty feet in height, composed, towards the surface, of layers of quartz eravei and Band, re'ting upon an irregular substratum of rock of somewhat similar composition. The sea, as it has intruded upon the softer material of the upper stratum, has laid bare the sandstone below, and the formation of a number of reefs, or more or less detached pieces of rock, at numerous points alon<» this part of the coa3t-line, has been the consequence — those dangers extending from a mile to half a mile from the shore, and regularly showing them selves by the " break" in heavy weather. One such reef h distinctly S marked on No. 10 of the Sheet Charts, and it ia considered that it is upon that reef that the South Australian has struck, although, if it is ao, its position on the chart appears to be somewhat to the northward of its true position on the coast. 