BY JAMES BACKHOUSE WALKER. 69 



request, Governor Hunter gave the name of Bass' 

 Straits.* 



Leaving Bass' Straits the Norfolk sailed southwards 

 along the West Coast — Flinders naming Mount Heems- 

 kirk and Mount Zeehan after Tasman's two vessels — and 

 on 14th December, arrived at the entrance of Storm Bay. 

 Flinders had with him a copy of Hayes' sketch chart of Flinders, 

 the Derwent, but had never even heard of D'Entre- Intro., p. 181. 

 casteaux's discoveries six years before. Bass, in 

 speaking of Adventure Bay, says, — " This island, the Collins' New 

 Derwent, and Storm Bay Passage were the discovery South Wales,' 

 of Mr. Hayes, of which he made a chart." More than "•' P- i®'^- 

 a fortnight was employed by Flinders in making a Flinders, 

 careful survey of Norfolk Bay, and of the Derwent from Intro., pp. 

 the Iron Pot to a point some 5 miles above Bridgewater. 181-189. 

 In the Introduction to his Voyage to Terra Australis, 

 he gives the result of his observations. Bass devoted 

 his attention more particularly to an examination of 

 the neighbouring country, its soil, productions, and 

 suitableness for agriculture. He took long excursions 

 into the country, having seldom other society than his 

 two dogs, examining in this way the Avestern shore of 

 the river from below the Blow Hole at Brown's River 

 to beyond Prince of Wales Bay, visiting various parts 

 of the eastern shore, and ascending Mount Wellington 

 and Mount Direction. His original journal has never 

 come to light, but the substance of it was published in 

 1802, by Collins, in the second volume of his Account ofCollins, ii., pp. 

 New South Wales. 143-194. 



It is interesting to learn how the country with Mdiich 

 we are so familiar struck the first visitor to its shores, 

 when as yet the land Avas in all its native wildness, and 

 untouched by the hand of man, and I shall therefore 

 give some of Bass's observations on the country about 

 the Derwent. The explorers had some difficulty in 

 getting the Norfolk as far up the river as the mouth of 

 the Jordan, which Flinders named Herdsman's Cove. 

 Thence they proceeded in their boat some 5 or 6 miles ibid, p. 186. 

 higher up. They expected to have been able to reach 

 the source in one tide, but in this they were mistaken, 

 falling, as they believed, some miles short of it. I regret 

 to say that Bass did not show the good taste of the 



* " No more than a just tribute," saj's the generous 

 Flinders, " to my worthy friend and companion for the extreme 

 dangers and fatigues he had undergone in first entering it in the 

 whale-boat, and to the correct judgment he had formed from 

 various indications of the existence of a wide opening between Van 

 Diemen's Land and New South "Wales." — Voyage to Terra Aus^ 

 trails, Intro,, p. 193. 



