494 THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



commanded by Mr. Bass, surgeon of the ship Reliance," 

 and he continued : " Consecrated, as I may say, by this 

 grand discovery, this bold navigation, Mr. Bass's boat 

 is preserved in this port with a kind of religious respect. 

 Snuff-boxes made of its keel are relics, of which the posses- 

 sors are as proud as they are careful, and the Governor 

 himself (Governor King) imagined he could not make 

 a more respectful present to our chief than a piece of 

 wood from the boat, set in a large silver foui,- round which 

 were engraven the particulars of the discovery of Bass's 

 Strait." 



Flinders' When Bass returned to Sydney, Flinders was away 

 Furneaux on a vo y a g e - Duties on the Reliance had prevented 

 Islands, him from joining his friend on the whale-boat. But 

 luck came to him three weeks before Bass returned. 

 Governor Hunter was sending the Francis to the Furneaux 

 Islands to bring back the cargo of a ship which had been 

 wrecked on one of them ; and he gave Flinders permission 

 to sail in her, in order " to make such observations, service- 

 able to geography and navigation, as circumstances might 

 afford." Flinders made his surveys with his usual care 

 and ability, and he wrote some interesting remarks about 

 seals and sooty petrels or mutton birds. The seals, he 

 said, reminded him of " a farmyard well stocked with pigs," 

 while petrels could be had in any quantity by thrusting 

 your arm into their holes, if you dared face the risk that 

 at the end of the hole there might be a snake instead of 

 a petrel. But Flinders' mind was chiefly concerned 

 with the problem of the unexplored sea to the West, 

 which Furneaux had thought to be a Bay. Flinders, 

 like Bass, reached the conclusion that Furneaux had been 

 satisfied with insufficient evidence. He observed from 

 Furneaux Islands the same significant currents which 

 Bass had just observed from Wilson's Promontory; and 

 he came to the conclusion, by this independent observation, 

 that " the great strength of the tides setting Westward 

 past the islands could only be caused by some exceedingly 

 deep inlet, or by a passage through to the Southern Indian 

 Ocean." 



