322 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



down below the forty-third parallel. Then came the expedition of that gallant adventurer, 

 George Bass, fully described in an earlier chapter of this work. He entered the inlet 

 of Western Port on the 4th of January, 1798; but after a stay of thirteen days there 

 was compelled by stress of circumstances to retrace his course to Port Jackson. In a 

 subsequent voyage he doubled Cape Grim, thus conclusively proving that Tasmania was 

 an island, and proving also the existence of the strait which bears his name. But to 

 Lieutenant Grant, of the brig Lady Nelson, belongs the honour of having discovered 

 and defined the whole of the coast-line of Victoria from Cape Bridgewater to Cape 

 Schank, and of having circumnavigated by way of Bass's Strait the south-east of 

 Australia from the first-named Cape to Port Jackson. 



The annals of maritime adventure narrate few more gallant and successful exploits 

 than that of the commander of the Lady Nelson. She was a small brig, fitted with 

 sliding keels, the recent invention of a Captain John Schank, a friend of Grant's, whose 

 name has been commemorated in connection with a headland to the eastward of Port 

 Phillip Heads. The little vessel had a crew of twelve men, and was provisioned for 

 a voyage of nine months. Among sea-faring folk on the River Thames she had obtained 

 the nickname of " His Majesty's tinder-box," and when she had taken her stores on 

 board and shipped her four brass guns and ammunition, her gunwale was only two feet 

 nine inches above the water-line. That such a craft would ever reach the other end of 

 the globe was regarded by many people as a chimerical expectation, and these apprehen- 

 sions communicated themselves to the crew, so that Lieutenant Grant had considerable 

 difficulty in keeping them together. He had been commissioned by the Duke of Port- 

 land, then First Lord of the Admiralty, to survey the south and south-west coasts of 

 Australia, to examine the shores of Van Diemen's Land, to search for and determine 

 the course of any rivers of importance that might exist, to report upon the soil, 

 products and indigenous inhabitants of these regions, and to take possession in the 

 King's name of such territory as it might be desirable to acquire in the interests of 

 Great Britain. Grant sailed from Portsmouth on the i /th of March, 1800, put in at 

 the Cape of Good Hope on the 8th of July, and did not depart thence until the 7th 

 of October. At eight o'clock on the morning of the 3rd of December land loomed 

 through the hot haze right ahead of the little craft, and a bold promontory, with a 

 reef of rocks at its base, and two mountains behind it, the one peaked and the other 

 table-topped, revealed themselves. Upon the headland he bestowed the name of Cape 

 Northumberland, and the mountains he designated Gambier and Schank respectively. 

 Shifting his course somewhat to the southward, Grant successively sighted and named 

 Capes Banks, Bridgewater, Nelson and Solicitor, also Lawrence Island and Lady Julian's 

 Island, both of them at the entrance of that half-protected bight which he called Port- 

 land Bay. As he coasted along Grant was much struck by the beauty of the scenery, 

 which he compared to that of Devonshire and the Isle of Wight, and he attempted to 

 land a little to the westward of Apollo Bay, but failed to clo so on account of the heavy 

 surf. Cape Otway he had previously passed and named, and then, steering a point or 

 two to the south of east, and disregarding the deep indentation of the coast to the 

 northward, he sighted and named Cape Liptrap, and on the loth of December made an 

 ineffectual effort to land on an island off Wilson's Promontory. Having sailed through 



