484 



THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



Unknown 

 coast " in 

 the South- 

 East. 



Is Van 

 Diemen's 

 Land an 

 island ? 



Is there a 

 river, or a 

 channel ? 



South, from Cape Leeuwin to the Island of St. Francis 

 and St. Peter, rested on one voyage, that of the Gulden 

 Zeepaart in 1627, a voyage of which no record remained, 

 save the bare statement on the map that it had been made. 1 

 And Eastward of the Islands of St. Francis and St. Peter, 

 all the way to Point Hicks was sheer vacancy, broken 

 only by the fragmentary outline of Van Diemen's Land, 

 as discovered by Tasman in 1642, with a slight extension 

 to the North East that represented the small discoveries 

 of Furneaux in 1773. It was this almost unbroken vacancy 

 between the Eastern edge of Nuytsland and Point Hicks 

 that offered the chief attraction to explorers. " Its 

 investigation," wrote Flinders, " had formed a part of 

 the instruction of the unfortunate French navigator 

 Laperouse, and afterwards of those of his countryman 

 Dentrecasteaux ; and it was, not without some reason, 

 attributed to England as a reproach, that an imaginary 

 line of more than two hundred and fifty leagues' extent in 

 the vicinity of one of her colonies should have been so 

 long suffered to remain traced upon the charts under 

 the title of UNKNOWN COAST." 



The " unknown coast " presented problems of peculiar 

 interest, both scientific and practical. Was Van Diemen's 

 Land continuous with New Holland, or was it separated 

 by a strait that would give a very useful passage to ships ? 

 Furneaux, the seaman who had best opportunity of know- 

 ing, had thought that they were one land, and that the 

 region between Point Hicks and Furneaux Island was 

 not a Strait but a Bay ; and Cook had accepted Furneaux's 

 opinion. On the other hand Governor Hunter, sailing 

 across this region in 1789, had argued from the appearance 

 of the sea, and from the set of the current, that there 

 was " either a very deep gulf or a strait." 



Still more fascinating was the problem offered by the 

 gap between De Nuytsland and Van Diemen's Land 

 or Point Hicks. It was a gap which, in terms of modern 



1 In 1791, however, Vancouver had sailed from King George III.'s 

 Sound to Termination Island, and in 1792 Dentrecasteaux had sailed 

 nearly as far as the Dutch turning-point. See pp. 246-247, 508. 



