116 notes on charts op the coast of tasmania. 



Discussion. 



Mr. J. E. McClymont complimented Mr. Mault on the 

 careful study he had made of these charts. Their friends in 

 Canada had set them an example in this depa^rtment of work. 

 The Eoyal Society there published from time to time 

 historical researches, largely regarding the early exploration 

 of their noble Gulf of St. Lawrence. The Canadians had to 

 go back 350 years ; as we stood much nearer the origins of 

 our history than they did, it would be a crying disgrace to us 

 if we allowed them to out-distance us, and if we sluggishly 

 left to our descendants historical work that could better and 

 more easily be undertaken to-day. He referred especially to 

 the discovery and exploration of the Derwent and its 

 approaches, and hoped that Mr. Mault, or some other equally 

 competent person would take the matter up thoroughly, and 

 he, for one, would be most happy to render all the assistance 

 in his power. They had a glorious heritage in this river, 

 with its maze of bay and island, strait and peninsula, 

 wrought out of the blue incandescence of a summer sea. 

 This intricate net had involved one navigator after another ;, 

 to bring order out of the confusion by tracing the develop- 

 ment of our completed knowledge of it would be an 

 admirable intellectual exercise. 



The voyages of Kerguelen and Marion du Fresne, were 

 historically connected with those of Bouvet de Lozier 

 and Bougainville, and Marion's later discovei'ies were the con- 

 firmation of those of Tasman. The voyage of Bouvet, in turn, 

 was undertaken for the French East India Company for the 

 purj)ose of discovering in the Southern Ocean a port for 

 their outward-bound vessels — an idea that was suggested to 

 the minds of these merchants by an imperfect record of the 

 voyage of Gonneville in 1503-1505. The tradition in France 

 was, that this merchant of Honfleur had been cast upon a 

 fertile continent and amongst a race of genial pagans when, 

 after roiinding the Cape of Good Hope, he had encountered 

 a violent tempest which drove him out of his course to India. 

 The tradition has been traced as far back as the year 1658, 

 when the Abbe Binot-Paulmier de Gonneville — a descendant 

 from the union of a native of the land on which Gonneville was 

 cast with a relation of the navigator — addressed a memoir to 

 the Pope begging that a mission might be sent to the land of 

 his origin. Whether the Abbe merely adopted a current 

 tradition regarding the discovery of his ancestor, or himself 

 misinterpreted the account of the voyage as given in a 

 judicial declaration signed by Gonneville and his ofiicers, we 

 cannot tell. At all events he placed the discovery south of 

 the Cape, and identified the land so fortuitously found with 

 the legendary Terra Australis. Bouvet's attempt to follow the 

 course taken by Gonneville led to his discovery, on the 1st 



