THE SUCCESSORS OF COOK 493 



Tierra del Fuego to the Solomons. Now Bass saw facts which 

 proved that he had discovered the Strait, and he was 

 content to say, in effect, that when someone else had - 

 discovered the Strait, the facts which he, Bass, had noticed 

 would be accounted for. It is satisfactory that, in spite 

 of all that Bass managed to leave unsaid, the Strait, 

 thanks to friend Flinders, bears the name of the man who 

 discovered it. 



Bass reached Sydney on the 25th of February after The fame of 

 an absence of eighty-four days. With " the assistance 

 of occasional supplies of petrels, fish, seal's flesh, and a 

 few geese and black swans, and by abstinence," he had 

 made six weeks' provision serve for twelve. Flinders 

 would have given many a week's wage to have had a 

 share in the splendid venture and exploit. But, to the 

 student, his absence was perhaps an advantage, for he 

 was the better able to praise. Bass's own diary is modest, 

 cautious, reticent, almost colourless : the one touch of 

 colour is the artistic description of the drunkard's nose 

 by which you may recognize Twofold Bay, and that touch 

 was no doubt forced upon him by irresistible reminiscence 

 of things seen in Sydney ; a city in which, as Dr. Lang said, 

 nearly everyone at this time was either selling rum or drink- 

 ing it. But when, sixteen years later, Flinders told th.e 

 story he could tell the whole truth. " A voyage," he 

 wrote, " expressly undertaken for discovery in an open 

 boat, and in which six hundred miles of coast, mostly 

 in a boisterous climate, were explored, has not perhaps 

 its equal in the annals of maritime history. The public 

 will award to its high-spirited and noble conductor, alas ! 

 now no more, an honourable place in the list of those 

 whose ardour stands most conspicuous for the promotion 

 of useful knowledge." And, in fact, the generally irreve- 

 rent public of Sydney had already awarded that honourable 

 place. In 1802, two French ships, of which we shall hear 

 more, sailed into Port Jackson, and a very able French 

 man of science, named Peron, wrote a description of Sydney 

 that has great historical value and interest. He told 

 of the discovery of the Strait " by a simple whale-boat, 



