EAR 



EARLY LIFE AND VOYAGE TO AUSTRALIA 127 



Flinders sailed from Spithead on i8th July, 1801, and it is 

 recorded that he raised discipline, sanitation and food supply 

 to a pitch never before attained, even improving on the methods 

 of Cook. The Australian coast, near CAPE LEEUWIN, was sighted 

 on 6th December, 1801. 



From the Leeuwin to Fowler's Bay, the coast was already 

 known. 



" In 1791, Captain GEORGE VANCOUVER, in the ' Cape Chatham? sailed along it 

 from Cape Leeuwin to King Georges Sound, which he discovered and named. . . . 

 In 1792, BRUNY D'ENTRECASTEAUX, with the French ships ' Recherche ' and ' Espfr&UtJ 

 searching for tidings of the lost * LaperouseJ followed the line of the shore more closely 

 than Vancouver had done, and penetrated much further eastward, to 131 38^', east 

 of the present border-line of Western and South Australia. These navigators, with 

 the Dutchman PIETER NUYTS, in the early part of the seventeenth century, and the 

 Frenchman ST. ALOUARA, who anchored near the Leeuwin in 1792, were the only 

 Europeans known to have been upon any part of these southern coasts before the 

 advent of Flinders ; and the extent of the voyage of Nuyts is by no means clear." l 



Fowler's Bay was named and surveyed by Flinders, who now 

 commenced to devote careful study to this part of the coast, 

 seeing that it was new to geography. As an evidence of the 

 minuteness of the survey, Scott compares the 240 names bestowed 

 by Flinders on the South Australian and Tasmanian coasts with 

 the 103 noted by Cook along the whole of the eastern coast of 

 Australia. 



Cape Catastrophe was rounded on zoth February, 1802, and 

 the northward trend of the land east of the Cape revived for a 

 time the old idea of the connection of the Bight with the Gulf 

 of Carpentaria. The ominous name of the cape was conferred 

 because on the 2ist a boat, with the master of the " Investigator" 

 John Thistle, a midshipman and six sailors, was upset while 

 returning from the shore to the ship, and the whole party was 

 lost. 



Spencer's Gulf was explored and charted between 6th and 

 2oth March, 1802, and Kangaroo Island was also discovered. 

 St. Vincent's Gulf was entered on 2jth March, and the survey 

 was finished on ist April. Forty years later, the foundations 

 of the city of ADELAIDE were laid at the foot of the Mount Lofty 

 Range, on country which Flinders had described as " well clothed 

 with forest timber " and " having a fertile appearance." 



Kangaroo Island was left behind on 6th April. About half 

 a degree to the east, on the 8th, Flinders met BAUDIN, in the 

 " Geographe" in Encounter Bay. It appeared that the " Geo- 

 grapbe " had sailed through BASS STRAIT and had been between 

 Wilson's Promontory and Cape Otway from the 28th to the 

 3 1st of March, thus narrowly missing the discovery of Port Phillip. 



Captain Nicolas Baudin, on the " Geographe" left Havre on 



1 Scott, Life of Flinders, p. 206. 



