492 THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



observe the site of Melbourne. But he had perforce 

 to turn for home. He had been given provisions for six 

 weeks, and he had already been away for nearly seven. 

 In his return voyage he noticed seals upon the island 

 near the Promontory, and made the remark, which proved 

 profitable to others, that " a speculation upon a small 

 scale might be carried on with advantage." He took 

 on board two of the distressed convicts, and, giving the 

 other five a musket, fishing lines and a compass, he landed 

 them on the continent, and advised them to walk 

 to Sydney, five hundred miles away. He had done all 

 that he could do for them, but they were never seen again. 

 He shows When near the Promontory, Bass noticed the rapidity 

 is ext^meiy ^ t ^ ie t ^ e an< ^ ma ^ e an interesting remark. " Whenever 

 probable. it shall be decided," he wrote, " that the opening between 

 this and Van Diemen's Land is a strait, this rapidity 

 of tide, and that long swell upon the coast to the Westward 

 will be accounted for." The phrase is comically cautious. 

 It reminds one of the saying of the Oxford classical student 

 who, when asked, after an examination in geometry, whether 

 he had proved a certain proposition to be true, replied 

 that, though he had not exactly proved it to be true, he 

 believed he had shown it to be on the whole extremely 

 probable. The fact was, however, as Flinders tells, that 

 " Mr. Bass himself entertained no doubt of the existence 

 of a wide strait separating Van Diemen's Land from New 

 South Wales, and he yielded with the greatest reluctance 

 to the necessity of returning before it was so fully ascer- 

 tained as to admit of no doubt in the minds of others." 

 But there was very little doubt in the minds of others. 

 Governor Hunter wrote home that " we have much reason 

 to conclude that there is an open strait " ; and Flinders 

 thought that no other proof of its existence was needed 

 than that of sailing through it. Bass's odd phrase is 

 interesting, as a singular illustration of the modesty of 

 the man, and of the cautious language of the new scientific 

 period. In earlier days, a seaman who saw a mile of land, 

 or even a good-sized cloud, in the Pacific was prepared to 

 swear that he had seen a continent which extended from 



