PREFACE. 
vii 
Since the return of the Expedition, my time 
has been occupied in arranging the narrative, 
and divesting it of such parts as were neither 
calculated to amuse the general reader, nor to 
give information to the navigator; but this has 
been so much impeded by the more important 
employment of constructing the Charts of the 
Survey, as to defer until the present season the 
publication of the events of a voyage that was 
completed nearly three years ago. 
In addition to the Hydrographical Notices in 
the Appendix, I have ventured to insert de- 
scriptive catalogues of the few subjects of Na- 
tural History that were collected during the 
voyage ; these were supplied by some friends, to 
whom I have in another part of the work en- 
deavoured, inadequately no doubt, to express 
my sense of the obligation : but since that part 
has been printed, my friend Mr. Brown has 
submitted some specimens of the rocks of the 
western side of the Gulf of Carpentaria, that 
were collected by him on the Investigators 
voyage, to the inspection of Doctor Fitton, by 
which means that gentleman’s valuable commu- 
nication in the Appendix has been most ma- 
