I0 8 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



bay named Port Phillip by Grant ten weeks before. Quitting this harbour Flinders 

 sailed straight to Sydney Cove, where he arrived on the gth of May, 1802. Here he 

 found Baudin's consort, Lc Xaturalistc, commanded by Hamelin, and Baudin himself 

 arrived in the month of June following. 



On the 22iul of July Flinders again sailed to carry out his long-cherished intention 

 of surveying Torres Straits. In this voyage he was seriously embarrassed by the Great 

 Barrier Reef, having sought a passage for fourteen days and sailed more than five 

 hundred miles before one could be found to the open sea. Arriving in the Gulf of 

 Carpentaria he began his survey with characteristic thoroughness ; to use his own words, 

 he " followed land so closely that the washing of the surf upon it should be visible, 

 and no opening, nor anything of interest escape notice." 



On the 8th of April, 1803, the Investigator made the Dutch settlement of Coepang, 

 Timor, and sailing thence for Point D'Entrecasteaux, Minders intended to make a further 

 and more complete examination of the southern coasts. Dysentery and fever, however, 

 compelled an immediate return to Port Jackson. 



The Investigator being too old to again take to sea, Minders embarked on board 

 the Porpoise for England, in company with the L'ato and the Bridgewater ; but the con- 

 sorts had left port only a week when the former two vessels ran aground on a reef, 

 Captain Palmer of the Bridgewater, who had escaped a like fate, cowardly deserting his 

 companions in their extremity. Flinders immediately assumed the command. Leaving the 

 main body in charge of the captain of the Porpoise, he and a small crew set out for 

 Port Jackson in an open boat, and after a terribly arduous journey arrived there on the 

 8th of September. Governor King immediately dispatched the Rolla to the scene of the 

 Avreck, Flinders accompanying in the Cumberland, a crazy boat of twenty-five tons in 

 which he hoped to make England after conveying assistance to his shipwrecked comrades. 

 They arrived at Wreck Reef on the jth of October, where the Cumberland parted com- 

 pany and continued her voyage, calling at the Dutch settlement of Coepang ; whence 

 after a short stay Flinders again set sail for Europe by way of Mauritius. The vessel 

 becoming more unseaworthy every day compelled him to call in at St. Louis, where he 

 and his people were promptly imprisoned by General De Caen, the 'French Governor. 

 The Cumberland was confiscated, her captain branded an imposter, and all the valuable 

 charts, journals and papers relating to the Investigators voyage were seized. 



The substance of the discoveries made by Flinders in the Investigator was afterwards 

 published in Paris as the work of Baudin, and although the charts and other matters 

 relating to the voyage came again into Flinders's hands, the third journal could never be 

 recovered. He was kept prisoner for six years, not being released until 1810. This 

 seems almost like poetic justice, for as the French now treated Flinders, the old 

 Honfleur navigator, Binot Paulmyer, Sieur de Gonneville, had been treated by the 

 English three hundred years before. 



In the annals of Australian coastal discovery, Matthew Flinders will ever rank second 

 only to the famous Captain Cook. Among the many things Australians owe to him is the 

 popular application of the name of their Continent a name before used only very 

 occasionally by chart-makers and geographers. In a note in the first volume of his great 

 voyage, he says : " Had I permitted myself any innovation upon the original term, it 



