EARLY AUSTRALIAN EXPLORATION. 



107 



CAPTAIN NICHOLAS UATDIN. 



D'Entrecasteaux, when in search of the unfortunate La Perouse had sailed along the 

 coast of the land discovered by the old Dutch mariner who gave the name of Nuyts 

 Land to the southern shores of Western Australia, which he coasted for many hundred miles. 



The Lords of the Admiralty, though seldom given to profuse expenditure for 

 scientific purposes, were when Flinders submitted his proposals to them in a mood of 

 opportune complaisance, and on the 25th of 

 January, 1801, gave him the command of 

 the Investigator, in which he left England on 

 the 1 8th of July of the same year. His 

 crew, including officers, numbered eighty-eight, 

 and was a truly remarkable one. Amongst 

 those on board were John Crosley the 

 astronomer, who afterwards left the expedition 

 at the Cape of Good Hope ; Dr. Robert 

 Brown, the greatest botanist of his age and 

 the friend of Sir Joseph Banks ; William 

 Westall, the equally celebrated landscape 

 painter ; Ferdinand Bauer, the natural history 

 painter; R. M. Fowler (afterwards admiral), 

 first lieutenant ; S. M. Flinders, the captain's 

 brother, second lieutenant ; and six midshipmen, 

 one of whom subsequently became Governor 



of Tasmania, and made a name in the history of maritime discovery as Sir John Franklin, 

 the ill-fated hero of Arctic exploration, and a martyr to the cause of geographical research. 



Flinders began his further work of discovery and marine survey by coasting the 

 Great Australian Bight ; he then traced the southern boundary of the country now known 

 as South Australia. On the 8th of April, 1802, he entered Encounter Bay, and found 

 there Nicholas Baudin, of the French ship Le Gcographc, separated from her consort, 

 Lc Naturalistc, by a gale in Bass's Straits. Flinders and Baudin interchanged civilities, 

 Dr. Robert Brown, the naturalist, acting as interpreter. 



Baudin had been sent out by the Republic to make good the French claims to 

 Southern Australia, from Western Port to Nuyts Archipelago, which they called Tcrrc 

 Napoleon. The French entirely ignored . the claims of England, or the discoveries of 

 English sailors. Spencer Gulf was Golfc Bonaparte ; Kangaroo Island masqueraded as 

 Lisle Dccres ; Gulf St. Vincent lost its identity in Golfe Josephine ; not even the 

 smallest bay or inlet escaped the infliction of a Gallic christening. 



That the French knew perfectly well that this was a fraudulent effort to appropriate 

 the fruits of earlier explorers is amply proved by the remark addressed to Flinders by 

 Baudin's first lieutenant at the house of Governor King, when they met in Sydney : 

 " Captain, if we had not been kept so long picking up shells and catching butterflies 

 at Van Diemen's Land, you would not have discovered the south coast before us." 

 Flinders names Cape Banks, or Buffon, as the eastern limit of French discovery. 



Following Grant's course in the Lady Nelson the first vessel to sail through Bass's 

 Straits Flinders passed King's Island and examined the entrance channel of the wide 



