East Coast, % V.D:s Land,} INTRODUCTION. cxix 
quarters that he was forced successively into Jervis Bay, Shoals ^ass. 
Haven, and Port Hacking ; and it was not until the 24th at night, 
that our adventurous discoverer terminated his dangerous and fati- 
guing voyage, by entering within the heads of Port Jackson. 
It should be remembered, that Mr. Bass sailed with only six 
weeks provisions ; but with the assistance of occasional supplies of 
petrels, fish, seal's flesh, and a few geese and black swans, and by 
abstinence, he had been enabled to prolong his voyage beyond 
eleven weeks. His ardour and perseverance were crowned, in despite 
of the foul winds which so much opposed him, with a degree of suc- 
cess not to have been anticipated from such feeble means. In three 
hundred miles of coast, from Port Jackson to the Ram Head, he 
added a number of particulars which had escaped captain Cook ; 
and will always escape any navigator in a first discovery, unless he 
have the time and means of joining a close examination by boats, to 
what may be seen from the ship. 
Our previous knowledge of the coast scarcely extended beyond 
the Ram Head ; and there began the harvest in which Mr. Bass was 
ambitious to place the first reaping hook. The new coast was traced 
three hundred miles ; and instead of trending southward to join itself 
to Van Diemen's Land, as captain Furneaux had supposed, he found 
it, beyond a certain point, to take a direction nearly opposite, and to 
assume the appearance of being exposed to the bufferings of an open 
sea. Mr. Bass, himself, entertained no doubt of the existence of a 
wide strait, separating Van Diemen's Land from New South Wales ; 
and he yielded with the greatest reluctance to the necessity of re- 
turning, before it was so fully ascertained as to admit of no doubt in 
the minds of others. But he had the satisfaction of placing at the 
end of his new coast, an extensive and useful harbour, surrounded 
with a country superior to any other known in the southern parts of 
New South Wales. 
A voyage expressly undertaken for discovery in an open boat, and 
in which six hundred miles of coast, mostly in a boisterous climate, 
