BY JAMES B. WALKER. 103 



for a settlement. The Terro de Dicnien and the Bale des 

 Temprtes exercised a particular fascination over successive 

 French navigators, and excited the attention of the French 

 Govennnent. It was a spot known only for a forbidding 

 rock-bound coast, waslied Ijy an angry sea, and lashed 

 by perpetual tempests. For more than a century afier 

 its discovery by Abel Tasman in 1642 no European had 

 invaded its solitudes, until on the 4th March, 1772, the 

 French navigator, I\Iarion (hi Fresne, anchored his ships, 

 the Mascariii and the Cuxlries, in the Fi-edci-ic Ilenthic 

 Bay of Tasman*. He remained there six days, landed, 

 and attempted to establish intercourse with tlie natives, 

 the attempt resulting- in an encounter in which the first 

 Tasmanian aborigine fell under the fire of European 

 muskets. After Marion, the English navigators l^'ur- 

 neaux (1773) Cook (1777), Cox (178<)), and Bligh (1788 

 and 17J)2) ))aid passing visits to Adventure iJay ; but it 

 was a Fienchman, again, who inade the fii'st survey of the 

 approaches to the Derwent. The instructions to La 

 Ferouse in 1785 had directed him to explore this, the 

 extreme southern point of New Holland; and the last r,a rmmse, 

 letter written by him from Botany Bay, on 7 I'ebriiary, ]j^.,'j-,J;' 2^3 

 1788, notes his intention to proceed there before his 

 return, — an intention there is some reason to believe he 

 executed'r. 'J'he exploration was made four years later 

 by Admiral liruny DKnti-ecasteanx, Commander of the 

 expedition sent out by the National As-eml)ly in 1791 to 

 search f jr the missing- navigator. It was t') Storm Bay 

 that his ships, the Jiecherclw and J^spcrdiicc, first directed 

 their course from the Ca))e of Good Mope. The autumn 

 of 1792 was far advanced before tlie French Admiral 

 sighted the basaltic cliffs of Van Diemen's Land. 

 Through an eri-or of his pilot, llaoul, he missed 

 Adventure Bay, which he had intended to make, and on 

 21st A))ril cast anchor at the entrance of the inlet after- 

 wards known to the j'^nglish as Storm Bay Fassage, but 

 which now more fittingly bears the name of D'Entro- 



* This in not the Frederick Henry Bay of the colonists, but 

 tlmt marked on the nmps ns Marion nuy, on the Kast Coast. 



i HiMit's Ainnimie for 1827 stute^ tlmt in tlie year 1809 Captain 

 Bunker, ol'the h-hip Vciiu.t^ t'oiind, l.mried on the shore of Adventure 

 Bay, u bottle eontaininp letti'is from I.u I'l'roiise dated one month 

 alter his leavin;; Port Jiickson. In the year lH2fi ('ii])tiiin I'eter 

 Dillon discovered tra(•(^s of Lii Perousi^'s expedition at Vanikoro, in 

 the Siinta Cruz (Irouj). 



