THE DUTCH DISCOVER AUSTRALIA 247 



in 1627, as far as the head of the Australian Bight. He 

 gave high praise to the accuracy of the Dutch chart, 

 and he gave French names to the Dutch discoveries ! 

 'It is not surprising," he writes, " that Nuyts has given 

 no details of the barren coast ; for its aspect is so uniform 

 that the most fruitful imagination could find nothing 

 to say of it." In January and February 1802. Flinders 

 surveyed with most exact carefulness the whole length 

 of the coastline discovered by the Dutch to its furthest 

 East at Fowler's Bay, and the islands of St. Francis and 

 St. Peter. The furthest East of 1627 was still the furthest 

 East of 1802. In what direction the unknown coast 

 trended, "whether to the South Eastward for Bass's 

 Straits, or Northward for the Gulf of Carpentaria was," 

 writes Flinders, " altogether uncertain " ; and he was there, 

 in the days of George III., to solve the problem suggested 

 by Dutch voyages which had taken place when Charles I. 

 sat on the English throne. From 133 to 146 was still 

 " traced upon the Charts under the title of unknown 

 coast." Like the French captain, Flinders paid his tribute 

 to the excellence of the Dutch Chart ; " making allowance 

 for the state of navigation at that time, it is as correct 

 in form as could reasonably have been expected." And, 

 like the French captain, he wrote an account of the aspect 

 of the coast likely to suggest that the reason why De 

 Nuyts told so little of what he saw ~was that there was 

 so little to see that was worth the trouble of telling. We 

 read of mountains called " West, Middle, and East Mount 

 Barren," of " sand and stone without the slightest covering 

 of vegetation," of soil producing " a delightful harvest 

 to the botanist," but producing nothing to the herdsman 

 and cultivator ; " not a blade of grass, nor a square yard 

 of soil from which the seed delivered to it could be expected 

 back, was perceivable to the eye in its course over those 

 arid plains." The monotonous line of cliffs, five hundred 

 feet high, and one hundred and forty-five leagues long, 

 looked like the " exterior line of a vast coral reef," and 

 suggested an interior of flat sandy plains or water. The 

 interior was, in fact, the "dreary and barren region" 



