H.M.S Samarang's discovery tour on Sea of Japan, landing on Dagelet.

The description landing on Dagelet by Arthor Adams with H.M.S Samarang. 1846-49, discovery tour around Sea of Japan.
From ; Arthor Adams, Travels of a naturalist in Japan and Manchuria (1870)　page 174-178.

We proceeded next to Dagelet Island where we arrived on the 28th June, at which period the weather was in every way favourable for its examination. It is one of the discoveries of La Perouse, and named after the astronomer of the Astrolabe. As we pulled towards the island I found the description of the renowned navigator very exact. “Very steep,” as he says, “but covered with fine trees from the sea-shore to the summit. A rampart of bare rock nearly as perpendicular as a wall completely surrouds it, except seven little sandy coves at which it is possible to land.”
We saw the grand central peak towering four thousand feet above us, partially enveloped in clouds. Around its base were huge, detached rocks, some of them four or five hundred feet high, one resembling a sugar-loaf, and another a rude arch. Within a little distance from the shore, numbers of sea-bears, of a reddish-brown colour, came up repeatedly and barked around the boat. The mad pranks and uproarious conduct of these strange ursine creatures offered a striking contrast to the placid demeanour of the gentle Phocae, or common seals, which only raised their round hears above the water, wounderingly gazed around, and quitly sank again below the surface. Shoals of black-fish rose up further off, baring their dark rouded backs; while several right-whales were spouting in the far distance. Some flying-fish leapt from the water, pursued by a large fish of the mackerel tribe, a noticeable fact,- four seals and flying-fish are not usually seen together. As we neared the island the wave-beaten limestone barrier, weather-stained and variegated with encrusting lichens, towered up from the surface of the sea, crowned with fit-trees, sycamores, and junipers. The officers of the “Boussole” in La Perouse’s voyage did not land, and we were probably the first Europeans who had ever set foot on the island.
The shore is composed of great limestone boulders, worn round by the action of the waves; the tidal rocks are covered with barnacles and limpets; and I observed that Monodonta neritoides, had taken the place of M. Labeo, which is the common species on the mainland. The barnacles are Pollicipes and Conia, and the Littorina or periwinkle is similar to that of the mainland.
As we landed in a little bay we perceived three poor Koreans at work. We observed that they were engaged with adze and saw in repairing a dilapidated boat exactly as La Perouse found those he saw eighty years ago. They had dried vast nnumbers of haliotis or sea-ears, which they string upon rattans for the Chinese market, and sell at the rate of three hundred for a dollar. They likewise collect great heaps of dried seals’ flesh, near which I found a dermaster, a silpha, a nitidula, and a staphylinus,-all carrion-beetles.
We made our way into the densely-wooded interior by means of the dried-up watercourses, which form steep, rough paths among the trees. Fringing the shore were gigantic Archangelicae, on the milk-white umbels of which flies, beetles, and bees were numerous. A species of Cissus was trailing over the great round boulders, and here and there was a vinic loaded with bunches of small sour grapes. The common thyme and Scrophularia, a little yellow Sedum, and a large blue aster, enlivened the edges of the rocks. The wood was composed of sycamores and junipers, with the Sambucus japonicus, the berries of which are red and not black, as in the common elder. I was curious about the denizens of so small and isolated an island. The birds I observed were cormorants, hawks, gulls, pigeons, blackbirds, sparrows, and small birds like willow-wrens. The Korean fisherman dry large quantities of petrels, leaving their skins in mouldering heaps along the shore. The only indication of a manual I met with was the skull of a cat, which may have belonged either to a wild species from the mountainous interior of the island, or to a domestic animal wrecked in a junk. I found among molluses the very peculiar slug of the mainland, a creature with the mantle covering the whole of its back; a little shining land-shell, named Zua, and two species of snails. The only reptile I noticed was a small snake coiled up under a stone. Under the dead fallen leaves and flat stones, I found a centipede about four inches in length; besides two kings of “thousand-legs.” And a large, brown wood-louse, called Armadillidium by naturalists. As for the beetles, they were too numerous to mentin. We enjoyed a refectin in a small secluded cove, and them pulled partly round the island, admiring many rocky pinnacles and off-lying rugged arches, and then rejoined the ship, which was standing off and waiting for the boat.