THE SUCCESSORS OF COOK 513 



8th of April, met a ship which came from the West, and He meets the 



which had made very careful survey of the Westward 



part of the unknown coast. It was the Investigator under 



Flinders, who had sailed nine months after Baudin, but 



\vho had nevertheless discovered nearly the whole of 



the " unknown coast " that remained unknown, and 



who would have discovered the whole but for an unlucky 



Easterly wind which had kept him back, while it blew 



Baudin forward to discover the fifty leagues of sterile 



coast, which were the French portion. 1 



Flinders had sailed from London in July 1801, when Flinders 



Baudin was sailing the West coast of New Holland. He ^P 1 ^ 63 th 

 & South coast, 



saw Cape Leeuwin in December, having made the voyage Dec. 1801. 

 in one hundred and forty-one days. Thence he sailed 

 along the utterly barren Southern coast which had been 

 charted by the Dutch in 1627, and by the French in 1792. 

 He reached the limit of the Dutch discovery at the Bay 

 which he called Fowler's Bay, and the neighbouring 

 islands of St. Peter and St. Francis. All the region between 

 these points and Western Port was, so far as Flinders 

 then knew, unknown coast ; and, as we have noticed, 

 its unknownness was made singularly attractive by 

 a problem which had puzzled geographers for more 

 than a century and a half. Flinders knew no better 

 than Tasman had known whether the coast he was 

 following would run South- Eastward for Bass's Strait, 

 or Northward for the Gulf of Carpentaria. He was on 

 the verge of solving what was probably the last great 

 question of Australian coast geography, and the inclination 

 was to expect that the solution would come in the form 

 of a channel or channels that would either halve Australia, 

 or cut her to pieces. 



On the 2Oth of February, 1802, Flinders seemed on the Spencer's 

 edge of this solution. A strong tide was noticed from 

 the North-Eastward, and the land ran to the North. Feb. 1802. 



1 When Flinders and Baudin met in Sydney a chart of the South 

 coast was shown to Baudin, which denned the limits of his discovery. 

 " Ah, Captain," remarked Freycinet, " if we had not been kept so 

 long picking up shells and catching butterflies at Van Diemen's Land, 

 you would not have discovered the South coast before us." 



